


Movement

by story_monger



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Afterlife, Character Death, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Gen, Ghosts, Grief/Mourning
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-27
Updated: 2013-03-27
Packaged: 2017-12-06 15:23:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 22,478
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/737181
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/story_monger/pseuds/story_monger
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sherlock is dead. He appears to be haunting John. John is unaware of this. Being dead is hugely inconvenient.<br/>Sherlock versus the afterlife.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Movement

**Author's Note:**

> Based on the prompt from gemini_melia (LJ): “I'd love to see a ghost!Sherlock watching over John after Sherlock dies.”
> 
> Many, many thanks to the thorough and wonderful red_chapel(LJ) for betaing and getting this fic to where it is now.
> 
> Originally posted a while ago at LJ

_The sight is familiar.  
  
The tree is far and the only thing to challenge the line of the horizon. It’s sunny here without being hot. It’s silent without being foreboding.  
  
He makes his way through waist-high wild grasses and feels their edges slice delicately at his hands as he walks.  
  
The tree waits, hovering just in viewing distance._  
  
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~  
  
When Sherlock woke, it was to a headache churning just behind his eyeballs. He kept his eyes shut for a moment, then brought his hands up to press the heels into his sockets.  
  
While watching the backs of his eyelids bloom red and purple, Sherlock listened to the rattle of the heating, the shouts of late-nighters coming home from the pubs, the hum of the refrigerator. He was in the flat, then, sometime in the middle of the night, and lying on the couch, if the lumpy pillow under his head was any indication.  
  
Which was all well and good, except he had no recollection concerning how he’d gotten there. Much less why he was still wearing his coat and scarf.  
  
Sherlock frowned into his hands as he reviewed his recent memories. He’d been on a case concerning a series of inexplicable robberies, he knew that much. He remembered that there had been a lead and he and John had been making their way to the east end of town. But after that, things got questionable and he found himself trying to turn fuzzy mental images into comprehensible data.  
  
It wasn’t working.  
  
Sherlock removed his hands and opened his eyes to find the ceiling of 221B just visible in the dimness. With a small grunt, he got himself in a sitting position and glanced around the empty flat. John was likely asleep, though why he’d be sleeping while they were on such a—  
  
He paused.  
  
The newspaper sitting on the table. The date was a week late. His eyes flicked over the table a second time. Only one dirty teacup left on the table. His gaze shot up.  
  
John’s cane leaning against the doorframe of Sherlock’s bedroom.  
  
Sherlock stood up and ignored the sick pounding in his head.  
  
The kitchen table cleared of his experiments. A fine layer of dust over police reports Sherlock had been reading. Three shattered mugs in the bin. John’s laptop open, his blog still up, the words “Sherlock Holmes was the greatest--“  
  
All wrong.  
  
A noise drifted from upstairs.  
  
In a second Sherlock was bounding up the stairs, his headache now a mere technicality. “John!” he shouted into the dimness.  
  
He slammed open the door and there was his flatmate, head just visible over the covers. He was having one of his nightmares again, obviously. The usual restlessness, muttering, all typical signs of a resting brain reviewing past traumatic experiences. This was expected. This was normal.  
  
“John,” Sherlock strode forward and pulled back the blankets, not caring whether John chewed him out for waking him in the middle of the night. At the movement, John made an odd strangled noise and Sherlock leaned in closer. “John, wake up!” he demanded.  
  
His flatmate bolted upright, staring into the middling distance with almost comically wide eyes. He was breathing raggedly. Sherlock waited for John to turn and see him, and then Sherlock knew he’d call him a git or ask him in a long-suffering voice whether this was important. Only John didn’t do either of those things. He collapsed back into his pillow and stared at the ceiling, still breathing hard. Sherlock ignored the shot of adrenaline that ran through his system.  
  
“There’s a problem, John,” Sherlock leaned over until he was looking down in his flatmate’s face. “If the indications downstairs are anything to go by, I’ve been incapacitated on the couch for nearly a week.” John was technically looking at him, but Sherlock didn’t think John was really seeing him. “I hope I wasn’t in a coma,” he added. Silence. “You’re not listening.” Sherlock snapped his fingers in front of John’s face, but no reaction was forthcoming. No movement of eyes, no change of countenance.  
  
Sherlock straightened slowly and looked to find the bed covers still sprawled over his flatmate’s body. He reached down to pull them back again. He felt their weight and solidity in his fingers, let them hang from his hand before letting them drop. The sheets crumpled on top of John’s legs, before Sherlock blinked and they suddenly became tucked up around his flatmate’s torso again.  
  
Sherlock looked up to find the bedroom door still firmly closed, even though he knew he’d not been the one to do it.  
  
“John, damnit!” he suddenly reached down and grabbed John’s shoulders, shaking him as hard as he could, not caring whether he hurt the war wound, just wanting John to  _look_  at him.  
  
John didn’t look at him. He didn’t even seem to notice that he was being attacked. His gaze remained fixedly on the ceiling, though he was blinking hard, and Sherlock saw a certain dampness to them. He let go of John’s shoulders abruptly. For a long moment he and John breathed heavily together, before John sighed and turned on his side. Sherlock took a step back and allowed himself to consider whether this was some elaborate ruse. It was a comforting thought for the millisecond in which it existed. But John was not the type to pull this kind of thing, and his acting skills were nil.  
  
The headache, he noted distantly, had swollen to fill his entire head.  
  
After another few seconds of thinking, John’s damnable blog rose in Sherlock’s mind.  
  
“Sherlock Holmes was…” Was.  
  
Was.  
  
Woodenly, Sherlock turned and left the bedroom. He thumped downstairs as loudly as he could, as if he expected John to spring from bed and yell at Sherlock to be quiet. Then he was in the kitchen, and his hand was bringing the laptop back to life, and he was reading.  
  
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~  
  
“You say here that I died a week ago,” Sherlock told John when he shuffled downstairs about twenty minutes later. (John never did go back to sleep after the nightmares.) John filled the teakettle and dropped it on the stove, rubbing a hand over his face. He looked older, Sherlock noted. “I was shot by the burglar while we were pursuing him,” he continued, as if John could hear him, but was ignoring him because he was tired and not in the mood. “The dullards from the Yard haven’t even managed to catch him.” He looked back at the blog with a light frown.  
  
John leaned against the stove and watched the kettle with a blank expression. This distracted Sherlock briefly; usually John was so expressive with his anger, his excitement, his annoyance.  
  
“If I am dead,” Sherlock spoke louder and stood, “then I believe this is what people might call an…afterlife.” The words sounded ridiculous even as they left his lips. He’d never believed that there was anything after death. This was hugely unexpected and thus it annoyed him that the universe had to go and prove him wrong. “I appear to be unable to permanently affect my physical surroundings,” Sherlock continued, starting to pace around the kitchen. He wondered whether there were any books on quantum physics lying around the flat. It would help him understand how things worked for him now. “Anyhow,” he continued, “there will have to be experiments with this; it may prove useful.” He whirled around to look at John, to see if he followed.  
  
No, John didn’t follow. He was busy pouring hot water into two mugs. The next moment, John froze, his gaze fixed on the second mug, the one Sherlock recognized as one of his own. There came the pain, blooming across his flatmate’s face like a wash of rain. John abruptly grabbed the second mug and dumped the entire thing into the sink. The handle chipped as it hit the basin, and John watched the broken shards spin wildly. Sherlock was staring, and he didn’t realize he was staring until John made a low sound and went back to the teakettle.  
  
Sherlock opened his mouth as if to say something, then closed it again.  
  
John didn’t notice anyhow.  
  
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~  
  
Being dead was boring. Sherlock found this out within the first few hours of his existence as a…physical anomaly.  
  
He couldn’t think of a more appropriate term for his condition. He refused on principle to consider using “ghost.” Far too many inane cultural implications. If Sherlock wanted a title for himself, he decided, he’d have to fall back on research and his own observations.  
  
He started by taking off his coat and scarf because he was getting uncomfortably warm. (Even if, technically, Sherlock shouldn’t have been feeling  _anything_  without a living nervous system.) The clothing detached from him without any fuss and after a moment’s consideration, Sherlock tossed them next to John. He watched them land with a soft  _whump_. No reaction, naturally. Sherlock tried not to let himself feel disappointed.  
  
Rather, he moved on to grab his laptop from his bedroom, letting its mass weigh down his hand and forearm. Like the covers, the laptop felt solid enough in his hands. But Sherlock knew he couldn’t be holding his  _actual_  laptop because he carried it from his bedroom and past John without eliciting so much as a second glance. (He waved it in front of his flatmate’s face to be sure.)  
  
His brow furrowed, Sherlock settled into his chair and flipped the laptop open to find that his internet had disconnected. He moved to “settings” and spent a solid five minutes trying to reconnect, failing spectacularly.  
  
His other programs functioned well enough, but that wasn’t what Sherlock needed at the moment.  
  
Useless.  
  
Sherlock abandoned the laptop (it ended up right back in his bedroom, even as he set it on the kitchen table) and then tried searching for his cell phone before realizing that, in all probability, it was somewhere in Scotland Yard wrapped in plastic and labeled as evidence in the murder of Sherlock Holmes. He had no idea how to think about that, so he didn’t.  
  
Instead, he stole John’s phone and spent several minutes sending texts to Lestrade and Mrs. Hudson and even Mycroft. No one answered back.  
  
Sherlock threw the phone at John in retaliation and watched it disappear into thin air the moment it left his fingers, before appearing back on the arm of the chair. John had been spending this entire time watching a show on the telly that involved young women receiving plastic surgery. Or rather, he was staring in the television’s direction. Sherlock didn’t honestly think the man had absorbed a word.  
  
“You’re no help,” he told John irritably. John was still ignoring him, and this riled Sherlock’s ire even more. “Honestly, John,” he stood in front of the telly, “instead of moping around you could open your eyes and realize that I’m here and perfectly eager to communicate.” John didn’t seem interested.  
  
Sherlock made a loud huff of irritation. “I’m going out,” he announced, grabbing his coat and turning to thump down the steps to the front door. He threw it open and squinted out into the watery winter sunlight. He almost hesitated before he thrust his foot out to step into the street.  
  
There was a dizzying hitch and then a feeling of being thrown around by a Golem-sized hand, and the next thing Sherlock knew he was stumbling into the door rather than out of it. He straightened, ignoring the pounding in his head, and whirled around to try again. The doorway repeated its little trick, leaving Sherlock to glare daggers at it while he straightened his coat.  
  
He wasn’t in the mood to try the third time, so he turned with as much dignity as he could and made his way back up the stairs, rebelliously leaving the door open behind him. When he turned around it was closed again.  
  
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~  
  
 _The museum is dim and dusty, but it’s unmistakably dignified too. He has no doubt that it’s seen much more than he ever could.  
  
He sits on a moth-eaten chair and watches the afternoon sunlight illuminate dust particles. Someone, a long time ago, once told him it was fairy dust.  
  
He becomes aware of her presence just before he hears water hitting porcelain. He looks up and finds the young woman sitting in an identical chair across from him. Her arms are extended and a delicate steaming teacup sits in her hands. He takes it and sips. It’s very good tea._  
  
You’ve been traveling a long while,  _she says, her dark, slanted eyes meeting his._  You travel slowly.  
  
How do you know?  _he asks.  
  
She ignores his question and pulls back a lock of black hair to blow at her tea._  You won’t make any progress until you start leaving things behind,  _she says. She looks up at him and her eyes are somber.  
  
He looks into his tea silently._  
  
Start simple,  _she says._  Think of the things that are long ago. They’re already loose and faded.  
  
I remember being young,  _he says after a long moment. He hesitates before he continues._  I remember going to the pond and trying to catch water bugs. I remember chasing the cat across the yard.  _He feels something rip inside him._  I remember someone’s arms holding me when I had nightmares. I remember fairy dust.  _The ripping feeling is getting worse, and he clutches the teacup as something leaves him without a second glance back. He feels thinner, suddenly. Less substantial.  
  
When he looks up, he is startled by her expression. It is pitying, and pained._  
  
It hurts, to lose yourself,  _she explains gently,_  but it needs to happen.  
  
 _He shakes his head._  Why?  _he asks.  
  
She doesn’t answer, just sips her tea. He follows suit, while carefully feeling the new hole in him where he suspects his childhood once was. It doesn’t hurt, per se. But it makes him uncomfortable.  
  
He squints through the window and is surprised to see the tree silhouetted against the light._  
  
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~  
  
Sherlock spent a lot of time the next few days in a simmering state of frustration. It wasn’t easy when the world suddenly decided to ignore your presence. Downright infuriating. Sherlock resolved to tackle it by laying bare the mechanics of these odd new laws, by understanding them so thoroughly that he could have a loud and pointed discussion with whoever had invented them.  
  
Not that Sherlock had a wealth of resources at his disposal. The internet wasn’t an option, and he found that most of the books in the flat dealt with medicine or criminology or psychology. He did find a handful of books that dealt with physics and quantum mechanics, but he couldn’t manage to apply tau leptons and neutrinos to his own situation. The physicists were more interested in applying theories to galaxies and alternate dimensions than to dead men.  
  
As it was, Sherlock explained to John after a day spent fiddling around with several objects lying around the flat, he’d have to make do with mere observation.  
  
“So, we know that I interact with some representation of a physical object,” Sherlock extrapolated as he rested his chin on folded fingers and eyed the stack of magazines that had been breeding on the coffee table the last few months. “However, when I’m in contact with an item, it doesn’t interact normally with the rest of the world. And it never retains the effects I had on it after terminating contact.” In demonstration, he took the topmost magazine and tapped John’s face with it.  
  
His flatmate might as well have been the skull, Sherlock considered. He let his eyes linger on John, who’d been staring at the same spot on the newspaper for the last half hour. He still looked unnaturally blank.  
  
Sherlock cleared his throat and refocused his attention to the magazine in his hand. “These magazines assumedly follow the basic rules of physics,” he stated, though in a lower voice. “This is like me then,” he flapped the magazine. “Nonexistent. Different molecular structure? Some alternative form of matter is possible.” He leaned back in the couch and brought his magazine closer to his face. He could see the pixels of color, smell the faded ink.  
  
Almost idly, he brought his finger to the magazine cover and lightly ran it along the sharp edge. A perfect sphere of blood welled up against his skin. Sherlock narrowed his gaze on the blood, then launched himself from the couch and practically sprinted for the microscope perched on the kitchen counter  
  
Several moments later, Sherlock straightened and let loose a snarl of frustration. He held his cut finger up to the light and watched, incredulous, as a second bead of blood formed, only to drop into non-existence as soon as gravity pulled it from his skin.  
  
Sherlock looked around the kitchen and went for the silverware drawer, rooting around a collection of items that were decidedly not silverware before finding a dinner knife and bringing it to the bleeding slice in his skin. He hesitated for a millisecond, hearing an echo of John’s voice asking him what the hell he thought he was doing. Then he dug the knife into his finger and noted the pain that accompanied it as the wound opened even further.  
  
Blood welled obligingly. Sherlock tasted it, then tossed aside the knife and brought his opposite hand up to smear the blood on his palm. The blood didn’t disappear this time.  
  
It did disappear as soon as Sherlock tilted his hand and let the blood from his cut descend toward the kitchen floor in large, steady drops.  
  
Sherlock stared hard at the wound dribbling blood into nothing, as if willing his body to behave normally. He finally let the hand drop to his side.  
  
“Contact with me maintains its existence…but at what level?” he muttered, unconsciously going into a pace in front of the counter. “I suppose this…body is functioning as a living one. What about the oxygen then, is that…no, wait, am I producing carbon dioxide? Damn, I need more materials if I want to test that.” He made another loose sound of irritation before catching a glance of his hand.  
  
He halted his pacing and lifted the hand to bring it inches from his face. Sherlock rubbed at the smooth, stainless flesh, his mouth slightly agape.  
  
“Healing,” he kept talking, because talking, at least, still made sense. “Or is it healing? Perhaps the injuries never happen. My own perception?” He let his hand drop slightly and looked in the middling distance. “Perhaps it’s all my perception.” He shook his head.  
  
Again, he needed  _data_. Only he remained stuck in the flat with no internet and inadequate laboratory equipment and a flatmate who couldn’t perceive him.  
  
Sherlock slammed the counter and swore as loudly as his throat would allow him to.  
  
His back was to the living room, and he didn’t see John start at the noise.  
  
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~  
  
When he wasn’t wrangling with the laws of his afterlife, Sherlock spent a surprising amount of time watching John putter around the flat, make tea, watch crap telly, the usual. Sometimes Sherlock could imagine that he was still alive and that they were going through a period of stagnation between cases. Almost. Then John would accidentally make two cups of tea, or he’d look at Sherlock’s papers from the case, and then his face would take that heavy expression before slipping back into the blankness that Sherlock found himself starting to hate.  
  
The nadir came one night, a week and a half after Sherlock’s death, when he found John sitting in his bedroom palming the handgun thoughtfully. Sherlock tried to yank the gun from John’s hands (perfectly steady) but John never noticed. After several failures, Sherlock stood in front of John and kept up a litany on how  _stupid_  John was and that going through with any plans concerning  _that gun_  would only top John’s list of stupid things and force Sherlock to withdraw absolutely any respect he might have had for the man. John never answered him, of course. But after half an hour he returned the gun to the bedside table and went downstairs, leaving Sherlock to sit heavily on the bed and wonder how his heart could be thudding so frantically against his ribs if he wasn’t even alive.  
  
Following that incident, Sherlock decided to concentrate his efforts on working out a way to  _truly_  move physical items, how to make his voice heard and his touch felt. He’d never be able to keep John out of trouble otherwise. It was frustrating work though. However much he moved, threw or destroyed a wide variety of objects, none of them retained Sherlock’s work.  
  
Sometimes, after shooting John’s gun and failing to produce anything besides a loud bang for the twentieth time, Sherlock slumped on the couch and tried to distract himself by re-reviewing the details of his death.  
  
It was a tedious pastime at best. John’s blog was of little help, and the articles he’d scavenged from newspapers were meager and useless. This left Sherlock with the recollections from his own death-addled brain.  
  
He knew that he and John had been pursuing Sean Winters, a young man believed to have broken into and robbed six houses belonging to the upper crust of the London population. They had finally found Winters in a seedy bar nearly two weeks ago and given pursuit (because what else was Sherlock supposed to do?).  
  
At that point things got fuzzy. Sherlock almost imagined he could remember the reeking, cold air as he followed Winters into a narrow alley. He almost heard the crack of a gun, the feeling of the bullet ripping through his brain. But he was never really sure, and he distrusted the vague sensations his mind offered instead of actual memories.  
  
On a few occasions while brooding over his death, he’d sit up from the couch or the floor, and look down to catch a brief glimpse of a pool of sticky, dark blood where his head had been. On one occasion he felt a ragged hole, warm and wet, hiding in his hair when he’d been ruffling it with frustration. He fingered it, lost track of it for a moment, then couldn’t find it again. When he looked at his fingers, they were slick with blood.  
  
Sherlock tried leaving bloodstains on the couch, or at least find a way to transfer some of it to his microscope for analysis, but it disappeared all too quickly. (He suspected he’d merely find ordinary-looking blood cells, like the skin cells he’d managed to glimpse when he partially peeled at the skin on his finger and stuck the entire thing under the lens. Nevertheless, you never _assumed_ , especially with a physical anomaly.)  
  
The headache never quite disappeared either, and Sherlock wondered whether that meant anything. He wondered whether the pounding against his skull was his own perception as well.  
  
Whether he existed anywhere save in his own consciousness.  
  
(This thought was always followed by a light scoff at how  _existential_  he sounded.)  
  
He often supposed he should be happy that his mental faculties all appeared normal, considering the cause of death. Yet that didn’t change the fact that a single bullet in the head had gone and killed him. Getting killed was such a plebian thing to do, he thought.  
  
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~  
  
In the first week, the only changes to the flat’s monotony came in the form of Mrs. Hudson. She made a habit of coming to visit John to make him tea or tidy up the flat or leave him a bit of whatever she’d prepared for dinner the night before.  
  
John, in return, was always polite and appropriately grateful and not fooling Mrs. Hudson one whit.  
  
Sherlock saw the looks she gave his friend, and felt an accompanying flicker of pride for the landlady he’d found for himself and John. Still, Mrs. Hudson didn’t seem intent on confronting John, and instead always left 221B with a reminder that she was just downstairs if John needed anything.  
  
Sherlock tried to follow her on several occasions, usually managing a few paces into her living room before he felt some invisible force starting to bully him back upstairs. It wasn’t as violent as the one that insisted he stay in the flat. More like a tiresome aunt that kept making loud comments, thinking she was being subtle. Sherlock kept sneaking toward Mrs. Hudson’s flat though, partially for something to do, partially to show the invisible force that he wasn’t about to be put off by it.  
  
Sometimes, when hovering at the doorway of Mrs. Hudson’s flat, he glimpsed her tidying up or making a cup of tea with obvious fretfulness in every action. He sometimes wondered whether she grieved. He wondered whether she, too, thought of John and the handgun sitting in his room.  
  
He knew he thought about it far more than he’d have expected. Whenever he did, he tended to give in to the pull that ordered him back upstairs, to where John sat alone.  
  
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~  
  
 _The flat is nothing special. It has unmemorable wallpaper, shelves lined with pictures of weddings and children. He glances over the pictures, then sees the old woman sitting on her neat little bed. Her eyes are unfocused and milky, her face a spider web of wrinkles.  
  
She stares pleasantly into nothing. He pauses, as silent in stillness as in movement, until she tilts her head towards him without tilting her eyes._  
  
Hello,  _the old woman greets. Her wrinkles shift and twist as she smiles. Her voice is breathy, and he has a sudden memory of the voice being cut off mid-phrase._  
  
Have you been waiting for me?  _he asks carefully, taking a few more steps forward. She doesn’t answer immediately.  
  
He feels himself start to panic then._  
  
I won’t do it again. I don’t want to lose myself,  _he says loudly._  I never wanted to come here.  _The old woman’s pleasant face turns sympathetic._  
  
Many don't,  _she says, her voice soft._  I certainly didn’t.  
  
 _He can’t find words to answer her._  
  
You don’t belong to yourself any more. You have to give it back,  _she says. He breathes in and out once._  Think of something, she prompts.  
  
 _He decides on his young adulthood, because everything else is too dear to him still._  I remember frustration,  _he says dully_. I remember having skills and trying to find out how to use them. I remember throwing myself into danger because I thought I was immortal.  _The irony doesn’t pass him.  
  
He sags slightly as he looses more of himself to the dusty corners of the flat. He feels like a ball of yarn being unwound and unwound, unable to stop._  
  
I remember being fascinated and thinking it was love. I remember trying to run from my family. I remember happiness, when I found myself in the middle of the battlefield.  _The warm thought drifts away from him, and he feels hollow, echoing. He lifts his head and finds the old woman staring at the wall, her face kind._  It’s not fair,  _he whispers._  I worked so hard to form myself. Why do I have to give it all up again?  
  
 _She shakes her head.  
  
He straightens and wipes his brow, aware of how frail his skin now is. But when he looks up, he also catches sight of the tree, waiting outside the window, just in viewing distance._  
  
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~  
  
A little over two weeks after Sherlock’s death, John seemed restless. He moved around the flat organizing things, cleaned up the empty mugs, peered out the window, then went back to fussing with the piles of books crowding the living room.  
  
Sherlock watched him for some time before getting bored and testing (again) how long he could get by with depriving himself of oxygen. So far the results hadn’t been any different from when he’d been alive, but he was willing to try again. He was almost hoping to go unconscious in the process, if only to pass the time.  
  
Instead, Sherlock merely got light-headed before his body forced him to reopen his airways with a minor convulsion.  
  
Honestly, requiring breath defied the entire idea of being dead. He still needed food and water and sleep as well, the first two of which didn’t even make sense, since he wasn’t technically eating real food or drinking real water.  
  
Sherlock had tested his limitations by fasting for the past week, before getting annoyed at the way the weakness and dizziness intruded on the rest of his research.  
  
Trying to outstrip his body’s need for water had been an absolute nightmare in comparison, though. He’d collapsed on the stairs to John’s room after 44 hours, retching and shaking and unable to draw a proper breath. How he’d dragged himself to the bathroom, he had no idea. It was no thanks to John though, who’d been reading one of his paperbacks the entire time.  
  
After that, Sherlock submitted (albeit unwillingly) to his non-body’s demands for the trivialities that should have stayed on the damn mortal coil.  
  
Such as now, when he was greedily sucking in air and letting it out in massive whooshes. He glanced up when John came down the stairs, changed into a clean jumper and fresh jeans. He had run a comb through his hair and splashed water on his face as well.  
  
“Where are you going?” Sherlock asked breathlessly. John shrugged on a coat and after a moment’s hesitation grabbed his cane. He held it awkwardly, like a hug with a distant relative. Sherlock stood at this point, grabbed his coat, and hurried to follow John to the front door, a vague idea coalescing in his oxygen-starved mind.  
  
He hesitated this time, as he stood poised on the flat’s front door. But John was already swinging the door shut and Sherlock couldn’t  _afford_  to hesitate. He leapt from the flat, his coat flying behind him, and his shoes landed on dirty pavement with a glorious _tump_.  
  
Sherlock twisted around to look at the flat, gave an unaware grin, then turned to see John with his hand raised for a cab. Sherlock felt a second surge of excitement as one pulled up.  
  
“Scotland Yard,” John told the cabbie, while Sherlock clambered over his flatmate to reach his seat. Sherlock got himself situated and glanced over to John with his eyebrows raised.  
  
“What do you want with  _them_?” he asked. John glanced out the window and Sherlock settled down in the grimy seat, wishing for the hundredth time that he had a phone. He didn’t even realize John had shifted his gaze to Sherlock’s seat until Sherlock heard a quiet, throaty “damnit.”  
  
Sherlock lifted his head and found John boring a hole into a point a little above his shoulder and left of his head. The blankness had fled in favor of a pinched expression that Sherlock thought he recognized from unsuccessful visits with Harry.  
  
Sherlock stared back at John and realized he only needed to shift his position slightly to obtain eye-to-eye contact with his flatmate. He didn’t, however, with the vague notion that it would make things…harder.  
  
Then John pulled his eyes back to the window anyway, and Sherlock dropped his gaze to the cab’s filthy floor.  
  
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~  
  
Fifteen minutes later found Sherlock peering around Lestrade’s office while John fiddled with his cane in the seat beside him. Not an incredible amount had changed in the two weeks since Sherlock’s death. A few homicides, a handful of suicides, the usual.  
  
No progress with Sherlock’s killer however, from what Sherlock had managed to glean from John and a few scant articles left lying around the flat. No arrests or indeed any further robberies.  
  
Unsurprising: from Sherlock’s research during the case, he knew Sean Winters was a very clever burglar, not a murderer. He had likely killed Sherlock purely out of panic and the unfortunate possession of a firearm, and was now lying low to avoid retaliation. Sherlock stood up and went to peer out the window, a light frown on his face.  
  
He was pulled from his thoughts by the arrival of Lestrade. The DI had a worn folder in one hand, and his rumpled hair and clothes told Sherlock he hadn’t managed to get home in the last 48 hours.  
  
“John,” Lestrade greeted, then waved at John to remain seated as he slapped the folder on the desk and sat heavily in his own chair.  
  
“Hello, Lestrade,” Sherlock said airily as he leaned over Lestrade’s shoulder to peer at the folder. “Managing somewhat without me?” Sherlock glanced at Lestrade’s vacant, tired face, then added, “By the by, any chances of me getting my cell phone back?”  
  
“Thanks for coming,” Lestrade ignored Sherlock and leaned forward slightly. John nodded once, his face carefully ambiguous.  
  
“No, it’s fine. You said…” he cleared his throat. “You said it was about Winters.”  
  
“Winters?” Sherlock looked up quickly.  
  
“Yeah. We’ve found him,” Lestrade said. He sighed and ran a hand over his forehead. “Dead in his cousin’s flat.”  
  
There came a long, low hum of silence.  
  
“What’s the condition of the body?” Sherlock shook himself into action. “Was there any kind of-- damnit, why can’t you  _hear_  me?” Sherlock slammed his fist on the desk, but both men remained unperturbed.  
  
“Dead?” John repeated a little faintly.  
  
“Stabbed in the back. Thirty-four times,” Lestrade said quietly. “John, I’m sorry-“  
  
“I don’t reckon I’m the one to feel sorry for,” John said in a low, toneless voice. His gaze skittered over the office walls before landing on Lestrade again. “Who did it?”  
  
Lestrade’s face grew grimmer, if that was possible. In reply, he flipped open the folder in front of him and pulled out a series of photographs. The first few showed images of a thin, dark-haired man in his late twenties sprawled facedown on a tiled floor. His back was so much tattered, blue t-shirt material and congealed blood.  
  
“This was found in his hand,” Lestrade passed John another photograph of a crumpled scrap of paper.  _This little thief stole more than he could handle. –M_  had been scrawled in purple marker. John stared at the photograph while Sherlock examined it over his shoulder.  
  
He heard the small sound that escaped from John, felt the way his shoulder stiffened. Sherlock turned his head ever so slightly and caught a full-blown view of John’s face setting into something hard and weary.  
  
John looked up. “It’s Moriarty.” He sounded so tired, and Sherlock briefly forgot the photograph. Instead he felt an inexplicable sense of gratification that Winters was dead and mutilated. He deserved it after what he’d done to John. To him. To them.  
  
“Yeah, I was afraid you’d come to that conclusion too,” Lestrade said.  
  
The two men were silent for a long moment, allowing Sherlock to reluctantly refocus on the photograph. He suspected John was correct, of course. The style was hard to mistake.  
  
“Looks like standard office printing paper,” Sherlock muttered, ignoring the way his brain suddenly felt frayed and headache-tinged. “Possibly taken from the apartment. The marker too, though it’s hard to tell.” He glanced up irritably at Lestrade. “If you would pay attention, I could ask you for the actual paper and we’d be able to get somewhere on this.”  
  
John suddenly let out a whoosh of air, then leaned back in his seat and pinched at the bridge of his nose. “Why now?” he muttered. “It’s all over. He’s won, so why now?”  
  
“No,” Sherlock straightened and shook his head vehemently, which honestly didn’t help his head. “He didn’t win. Winning would have meant destroying me in one of his games. I was killed by a burglar in a dirty alley.” A grin flew onto his face. Moriarty had lost. Sherlock didn’t know if that meant he’d won, exactly, but at the least it came to a tie.  
  
“He’s a psychopath?” Lestrade offered, rubbing at his jaw.  
  
It was a pity Lestrade couldn’t see the scowl Sherlock threw in his direction.  
  
There followed a tense silence that shouted  _Sherlock would have been able to find something._  
  
“I  _have_ ,” Sherlock assured them, pacing around the small office. “And believe me, I have every intention of ending this. Only none of you are being any help.” He was getting unbearably frustrated with the lack of attention and the damn headache was filling his skull again, so it may have explained why he drove his foot ill-temperedly into a pile of papers sitting beside Lestrade’s desk. He continued his pacing, then froze when Lestrade made a noise of annoyance.  
  
“The hell?” the DI muttered as he left his chair and crouched down to gather up papers that had seemingly exploded from their stack. John stared stupidly for a moment before joining Lestrade, albeit stiffly.  
  
Sherlock didn’t dare move.  
  
The two men made short work of the spilled papers. Lestrade dumped his final handful of papers on top of the stack’s remains. He sighed and stood, running his hand through gray hair. John paused in his paper gathering and looked up. “What?”

  
“If this is Moriarty…” Lestrade shoved his hands into his pockets.  
  
“Unless Winters enraged one of his theft victims so incredibly that they felt compelled to stab him 34 times, then I believe there’s little doubt, Lestrade” Sherlock told him as he finally crouched by the stack of papers. “Even you could see that.” He lifted one page, wriggled it around a bit, then glanced up at the two men. No reaction.  
  
John dumped his papers on the stack and stood as well, leaning heavily on the cane. Sherlock took this opportunity to shove the stack over again.  
  
“Why the hell did he need to go and get himself shot?” Lestrade bit out, staring at the wall. Sherlock paused and glanced up. “I shouldn’t have let you two go looking for Winters by yourselves.”  
  
Sherlock blinked at the papers, which had returned to their haphazard pile the moment he’d looked away.  
  
“We need him,” Lestrade finally looked at John. “You know what I mean, don’t you?” He made an odd, choking laugh. “We need the miserable, insane genius back because otherwise,” he waved a wild hand at the photos of the dead Sean Winters, “otherwise this goes up shit creek very very quickly.”  
  
Lestrade looked on the verge of a breakdown, Sherlock realized with a surge of alarm. It looked very wrong.  
  
But then John, John the doctor and John the soldier, had stepped forward and placed a hand on Lestrade’s arm.  
  
“It wasn’t your fault,” he said in a voice that managed to be kind and no-nonsense at once. “And from what I’ve gathered, you’re not a shoddy detective yourself.”  
  
Lestrade took a deep breath. “Yeah,” he muttered. He swiped a hand across his eyes and huffed a laugh. “Look at me,” he said gruffly. “Bet he’d be making some smartass comment at me right now.”  
  
“If you think that, then your powers of deduction haven’t improved in my absence,” Sherlock muttered, staring hard at them both.  
  
“Probably,” John agreed.  
  
Lestrade took another breath and glanced sideways to John. “How are you holding up?” he suddenly asked, as if he figured he needed to ask it now or never.  
  
John stiffened and let his hand drop. “I’m holding,” he stated, then didn’t elaborate.  
  
Lestrade didn’t seem eager to examine both his and John’s emotions, so he merely slapped John on the back and took another breath.  
  
“Right,” he nodded. “Right. Moriarty. I’ll contact my DCI. We’ll look over the body again to see if there’s anything we missed. Hopkins can do it. Remember him? Young kid, hung on his every word like it was gospel.”  
  
John grinned unexpectedly. Sherlock found himself taken off guard by its appearance, found himself watching it almost hungrily as John said, “Last thing his ego needed, honestly.”  
  
Lestrade tried the laugh again, and did it much better.  
  
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~  
  
 _For the longest time, he can’t figure out why the city seems so odd. He’d like to ask the young man next to him whether he notices anything, but he’s too focused on his wringing hands. It’s almost more a boy than a man, he notes. He’s thin and dark-haired with a faded blue t-shirt that’s too big for him._  
  
I’m…I’m supposed to carry you,  _the young man says suddenly. He doesn’t look up from his hands._  They told me. As far as I can take you.  
  
 _He knows now why the city is so odd. It’s completely empty save for himself and the nervous young man._  
  
Why carry me?  _he asks the man._  I still have a lot of things weighing me down. You’d have to carry them too.  
  
 _The young man swallows nervously and still doesn’t look up._  I gave you a lot of those burdens,  _he mutters.  
  
So he nods and then the young man has him in thin arms that are frightened above everything else. They stay silent as the young man walks down empty streets and past empty buildings.  
  
As they walk, he feels memories loosening themselves from him and dropping onto the pavement. Memories of another city, a busy city._  
  
I remember cabs, _he says, even if the young man isn’t listening._  I remember traffic jams and awful crime rates. I remember people living right on top of one another. I remember dirt and smoke and murder, and I loved it.  
  
 _He can’t know how long they travel, but he knows that at some point he is placed on his own feet again. They are at the edge of the city, and empty land stretches before them. He finds the young man looking even paler and thinner than before, sitting heavily on a crumbling curb._  
  
I didn’t know,  _the young man mutters.  
  
He looks back into the city. He notes that he feels lighter, and that the old, busy city he once loved is gone from himself._  
  
Have you started letting things go yet?  _he asks, almost conversationally. The young man looks up._  
  
I’ve been letting things go for a while now,  _he says._  I’ve lost my mum and my sister. My friends. School. My first shoplift.  _He stares heavily into the space between them._  I haven’t been able to lose what I did to you yet. You or your friend. They told me doing this would help.  
  
And has it?  
  
 _The young man shrugs, shakily._  I’m scared to let anything go at this point,  _he admits._  I’m so thin.  
  
 _He contemplates the empty city as the young man falls silent. He can relate, he supposes. Hasn’t he caused death? Don’t those still weigh on him? He knows they’ll be unpleasant to release when the time comes._  
  
Well,  _he looks back at the young man._  I understand why you did it, I think. If that helps.  
  
 _The young man looks at him helplessly. And then he sees some part of the young man seeping from him, like a mist in midday. The young man looks away and starts shuddering.  
  
He knows then that they’re done, so he begins walking towards the swathes of farmland radiating from the city. He soon leaves the gasping young man behind.  
  
The tree is there, shifting in winds he can’t feel._

_~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~_

_“_ I wish you’d agreed to see Winter’s body,” Sherlock told John in a voice that was meant to be irritable but fell flat somehow. He felt oddly loose and tired, like someone had taken a hammer to his muscles, followed by a crowbar to his brain. He didn’t want to do anything more strenuous than collapse on the couch and try to ignore the headache currently roaring within his skull. _  
  
_He felt like he’d just had a long, exhausting cry, Sherlock suddenly realized as John hailed a cab. He hadn’t felt like this in…well, in years. Decades, literally. _  
  
_Sherlock blinked hard and rubbed at his face with the realization, then hurried over to climb in the seat beside John.  
 _  
_Had John cried over all this, Sherlock suddenly wondered. He hadn’t seen anything since waking up on the couch a week ago, but it could have happened immediately following his death. At the funeral, perhaps. _  
  
_“221 Baker Street,” John said. Sherlock focused on the laugh lines and the frown lines scarring John’s face, the way his mouth tilted, the heaviness in the dark blue eyes. He’d done this before, of course. He was always observing John. But now he did it carefully and with purpose. How did you tell whether a man had shed tears two weeks ago? Shed tears ever? Sherlock didn’t know if he could tell; his brain felt so addled by the pain and the fatigue of _ _existing_.  
  
_ “John I-“ Sherlock faltered, then tried again, working around the cotton in his mouth and head. “I suspect I have hurt you by dying.” His throat suddenly felt the size of a pinhole. “For what it’s worth, I’m sorry.” He leaned forward until his face was mere inches from John’s, his breath ghosting on his flatmate’s cheek. (Why on earth did he have breath?) _  
  
_“John?” And Sherlock felt the pinhole shrink even further. “John, I said I was sorry.” He shut his eyes and let his forehead drop down on John’s shoulder. _  
  
_Sluggishly, Sherlock became aware of a thick trickle in his hair and the sudden taste of iron on the roof of his mouth. He brought one hand up to his skull’s frontal bone, to a point a few inches above his right eye. He probed at the hot, ragged hole he found there and found himself wondering whether he’d find the bullet if he dug deep enough. _  
  
_John made an odd noise beside him, and Sherlock let his hand drop from the wound to watch his flatmate lift his head and frown. He sniffed, then looked down at himself searchingly before making a second noise and leaning his head back against the seat.  
 _  
_Sherlock pulled his head from John’s shoulder and looked down to catch a glimpse of his bloodied fingers. He curled the hand into a fist and stuffed it roughly into his coat pocket. _  
  
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~  
  
_ Sherlock moved around the flat in a slight stupor for the next few days. He could tell John was experiencing the same, from the way he stuck to the same, automatic routine and the glazed look in his eyes. The only time Sherlock saw the blank expression slip came when John’s cell phone buzzed with a new message or loud, unexpected noises drifted up to the flat. _  
  
_Most likely thinking about Moriarty then, which was just as well. Sherlock was doing the same, because dead or not, Sherlock knew he was still the best chance at finally finishing Moriarty and his games. _  
  
_Sherlock wasn’t sure how to catalogue Moriarty’s actions in this particular game. He suspected anger was involved. A sense of being cheated, obviously, like a child who had been denied a promised treat. Some sense of revenge, but against whom? Winters, obviously, but something told Sherlock that there was more to it than a petty revenge murder. _  
  
_And Sherlock thought that possibly, there was an element of grief involved. A twisted representation, but grief nonetheless. Sherlock had no idea what to think about that.  
 _  
_It was usually at this point that he wished he could see Winters’s body or the note or something to give him better data. Unfortunately, John had declined Lestrade’s offer to get involved in the investigation, citing something about not being up to it. _  
  
_John had indeed begun to look even grayer and more tired the last few days, and Sherlock could tell he’d been losing weight. The cane started coming into greater use as well, which annoyed Sherlock to no end. _  
  
_He kept trying to hide the gun, just to be safe, but it refused to stay anywhere that he placed it. _  
  
_Thus it was with great relief that Sherlock accompanied John on a second venture from the flat, several days after the visit with Lestrade. They ended up going to Tesco, and Sherlock amused himself by following John down the aisles and calling out people’s professions based on their purchases. _  
  
_It wasn’t quite as good as if John could hear him and offer the occasional question or word of admiration. It would have to do, though. _  
  
_Sherlock kept this up until a curious incident, which occurred when Sherlock paused to better see which brand of biscuits a woman had in her basket. One moment he was leaning unseen over her shoulder, the next he felt a shove and he was stumbling down the aisle until he crashed into John. Sherlock lurched from John, who hadn’t noticed anything anyway, and scanned the aisle a little wildly. Nothing. _  
  
_Sherlock turned to find John examining crackers. He frowned a moment, then took several careful steps further down the aisle. When he was nearing the woman again, nearly all the way down the aisle, Sherlock felt his feet slow, as if held in place by invisible rubber bands that were stretching to their limit. He tried to take another step and felt his foot waver dangerously, threatening send him tumbling to the ground. Sherlock let the foot down, then felt a slight grin quirk the edges of his mouth. _  
  
_Fascinating. _  
  
_So it was that Sherlock spent the rest of John’s Tesco trip hovering at the edge of the invisible connection (approximately ten meters, if he had to guess), testing his own will against this odd law of his afterlife. _  
  
_He was still hovering several meters behind John when he spotted the black car at the curb in front of their flat.  
 _  
_“What the--“ Sherlock caught up to John and bounced impatiently on his toes as John set down his grocery bags and fished his keys from his jacket. When John swung the door open, Sherlock was bounding up the stairs in a flurry of coat and scarf. _  
  
_“You,” Sherlock said in outrage as he skidded to a stop at the top of the stairs. “What the bloody hell are you doing here?” _  
  
_Mycroft ignored him and instead tilted his head forward to listen to John struggle up the stairs with his cane and groceries. Sherlock ripped his coat off and tossed it towards Mycroft’s face, but it missed and landed on the floor beside the chair with a soft _whump._  
 _  
_Sherlock huffed, then threw himself onto the couch and glared at Mycroft through the fringe of his curls. A moment later, John arrived and stopped short at the sight of the British government reclining in his chair and toying at the rug with the tip of his umbrella. _  
  
_“Ah, John,” Mycroft looked up and stood smoothly. “Good afternoon.” _  
  
“_ Good…hang on, the door was locked, I…” John shut his eyes briefly. “No, never mind. Hello.” He shifted his cane. “Er, would you like some tea?” he asked lamely. _  
  
_“I won’t be staying that long,” Mycroft smiled graciously. “Please take a seat.” John did so, in that slightly automatic way in which most people followed orders issued by Mycroft Holmes. Sherlock frowned. John was obviously not fully himself. _  
  
_“How are you, John?” Mycroft seated himself as well and crossed his legs. John blinked, hard, then looked down at the groceries and cane scattered at his feet. _  
  
_“I’m...” He looked up. “Shouldn’t I be asking you that question?” Ah, that was better. _  
_

Mycroft raised one eyebrow. _  
  
_“You’ve just lost your brother,” John said, his face taking on a set expression. _  
  
_“I don’t want the fat git’s grief anyhow,” Sherlock shouted from the sofa. _  
  
_“And you just lost your friend,” Mycroft replied, raising his chin. “I assume you were friends at this point?” _  
  
_John trained dark blue eyes on him and didn’t answer. _  
  
_“Oh yes, brilliant deduction, Mycroft,” Sherlock snapped. “ _I assume you were friends.”  
  
_ “I’ll repeat then, John. How are you?” Mycroft continued. _  
  
_John bit his lip and rested his elbows on his knees. “I’m here,” he said. _  
  
_“As I observe.” _  
  
_“Goddamit, are all you Holmes the same?” John suddenly snapped. “You sit there and make snide remarks about how clever you all are while people, while your damn brother, lies dead?” _  
  
Grief may have moved to the anger stage_ , Sherlock noted. _  
  
_Mycroft twirled his umbrella, seemingly unperturbed, except that he was tapping his fingers on the couch, which told Sherlock he was uncomfortable. Good, Mycroft needed to be taught not to come billowing in and bothering them whenever he wanted. _  
  
_“I understand the grief is still raw--“ he started. _  
  
_“And I suppose you’re all over it already,” John cut him off, his expression twisting into the odd smile he took in anger. He stood a little unsteadily, but he didn’t reach for his cane. “The door’s that way.” He stooped and gathered his bags before stalking to the kitchen. Sherlock sat up and watched Mycroft frown gently at his umbrella before standing. John was shoving tins of beans into the cabinet when Mycroft appeared at the entryway to the kitchen. _  
  
_“Detective Inspector Lestrade has gone missing,” Mycroft said. Sherlock wrenched himself to a stand. John resolutely crumpled the empty plastic bag and tossed it in the bin before turning to Mycroft. _  
  
_“What?” he said in a dangerously flat voice. _  
  
_“Yesterday. He was scheduled to question the cousin of Sean Winters. He left his flat around three in the afternoon and never arrived at Scotland Yard.” Sherlock had crossed the room without realizing it and now stood with his face much too close to that of his brother. _  
  
_“What do you mean missing?” he hissed. _  
  
_“There was a note, wasn’t there?” John said.  
 _  
_Mycroft raised his eyebrows. “Indeed,” he said. He reached into his three-piece suit and pulled out a photograph. “It was found on his desk.” _  
  
_Sherlock pushed himself past Mycroft so he could see the photograph in John’s hand. It showed a scrap of paper and red ink that read _Poor leaders should not be allowed to retain their positions. –M_ _  
  
_Sherlock let loose a string of swears. John merely stood very still, his hand steady at his side. He looked up at Mycroft, his expression stony. _  
  
_“Moriarty again.” _  
  
_“Precisely why I am here,” Mycroft nodded. _  
  
_“It doesn’t make any sense,” Sherlock hissed, his eyes still glued to the photograph.  
 _  
_“Why Lestrade?” John voiced Sherlock’s thoughts. “What does he have to do with it?” _  
  
_Mycroft shrugged eloquently, examining the tip of his umbrella. “He was present on the night of my brother’s death.” Sherlock almost didn’t notice the tonal shift in his brother’s voice as he spoke the last two words. Almost. “It’s my understanding that Lestrade wanted you two to wait for him and his team before pursuing Winters.” Mycroft’s lips quirked in the replication of a smile. “Obviously he was ignored.” _  
  
_“So Moriarty blames Lestrade too?” John spat, suddenly throwing the photograph on the kitchen table. “He’s just going to kidnap and kill everyone he thinks stole his fucking chance to kill Sh--“ he cut himself off and dropped his gaze. _  
  
_“He is a psychopath,” Mycroft reminded him in a voice one might use to remind a child that he needs to eat his vegetables. Sherlock had a sudden and vicious urge to punch Mycroft in his pointy nose. _  
  
_“Brilliant,” John muttered. He frowned and glanced back at Mycroft. “Who’s looking for Lestrade?” _  
  
_“Scotland Yard is throwing its full weight into the investigation,” Mycroft replied. “And I have several of my best people helping things along.” _  
_  
“Your people,” John lifted his chin. “They couldn’t manage to find Winters before he turned up dead. For god’s sake, he didn’t even leave London.” Sherlock glanced up and grinned unabashedly.  
 _  
_Mycroft made a fantastically aristocratic sniff. “You seem to be channeling my brother’s spirit,” he said. “Or perhaps you’ve picked up his considerable gift of rudeness.” _  
  
_“Maybe both,” John smiled humorlessly. _  
  
_Mycroft eyed him critically. “Don’t believe that I didn’t pour as many possible resources into finding my brother’s murderer as I could.” His voice had taken on a tone that made foreign dignitaries mumble things about finding mutually agreeable arrangements. _  
  
_“Guess it wasn’t enough,” John said, then reached for another grocery bag. Sherlock actually laughed aloud. _  
  
_“Dr. Watson,” Mycroft continued after a long pause. “I’m going to trust that you see where Moriarty’s pattern will inevitably lead.” _  
  
_John opened the refrigerator and tossed the apples in the crisper. “I did live with the world’s only consulting detective for three years,” he stated blandly. _  
  
_“Then you’ll understand why you cannot possibly stay here.” John shoved two bottles of milk on the top shelf, then closed the refrigerator door. _  
  
_“I’m sorry,” he said. “No.” _  
  
_“Dr Watson-“ _  
  
_“I’ve been kidnapped by him before. Familiarity breeds contempt and all that.” _  
  
_Mycroft was tapping the handle of his umbrella again. “Perhaps you don’t understand me,” he said coldly. “You are, essentially, what remains of my brother, John. I am not going to allow Moriarty to have that.” _  
  
_John turned and studied Mycroft, his dark blue eyes heavy and calm, even as Sherlock saw something else stir behind them. Like rip tides. _  
  
_“And this,” he gestured to the flat, “and Moriarty. They’re what’s left of him for me. I’m not giving them up either.” _  
  
_“I’d not be afraid to use force.” _  
  
_“Good. I’d not be afraid to use force to get back.” _  
  
_“You’re proclaiming a death wish, John.” _  
  
_“That’s very possible.” _  
  
_The two men stood silently in the kitchen while Sherlock sank into a chair. From this angle, the incoming sunlight sent a glow through John’s dull blond hair. _  
  
_“I have this flat on constant surveillance,” Mycroft warned. _  
  
_John nodded. The sunlight sparked the leather of his skin. _  
  
_“I’m not promising not to relocate you regardless.” _  
  
_“You won’t,” John said. He looked around the kitchen and for a brief, heart-stopping moment his gaze rested directly on Sherlock before flicking back to Mycroft. “Neither of us would betray him like that,” he said. _  
  
_Sherlock felt a small sound escape his throat. _  
  
_Mycroft copied John’s glance around the room, as if looking for Sherlock in the lab equipment lined up on the counter, or the piles of newspapers and stolen police reports scattered across the floor. He didn’t find anything, apparently, because he sighed ever so lightly, then tapped the floor once with the tip of his umbrella. _  
  
_“Very well,” he said. “Good afternoon, John.” _  
  
_John remained silent as Mycroft walked from the kitchen. _  
  
_“Mycroft,” he called suddenly. The brother paused. “I’m sorry,” John said. _  
  
_A curt nod, before the British government made his way back down the stairs. _  
  
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~  
  
_ “The fat, interfering, stupid, fat, nosy, pompous…. _ _fat_ …” _Sherlock struggled for another word as he paced the floor.  
 _  
_He glanced over to find his flatmate still on the couch with his head tilted toward the ceiling, just as he had been for the last ten minutes. His eyes were flinty and his jaw line taut. Sherlock recognized the expression from countless tight situations, when he’d looked beside him to find John with his gun drawn and his face set. _  
  
_Sherlock slowed his movements before halting them altogether. He took a step forward and bent down so that his hands sprawled on the coffee table, his face nearly level with John’s. “John,” he said in a low voice, willing to be heard. “You’re not stupid. Mycroft is…” he made a face. “He’s __correct__  in that Moriarty will find his way here. But there’s no reason to keep you alive anymore, John, don’t you see? Lestrade is…” Sherlock found he couldn’t finish that thought. _  
  
_John’s jaw tightened and loosened as he continued to scrutinize the ceiling. Thinking about Moriarty; Sherlock could deduce that much from the hole John was boring into the plaster above him. _  
  
_“John,” Sherlock quickly rounded the table and stood beside his flatmate, peering into his face. “You had better not be planning something heroic. It won’t do any good.” He furrowed his brow in frustration. “What happens to me when you die? Have you thought of that at all?” _  
  
_After a long moment, John brought his head upright again, his brow low over his eyes.  
 _  
_“You have planned something heroic, haven’t you?” Sherlock spat, dropping onto the couch beside John, their shoulders brushing. “You damn _ _soldier__.” He propped his chin in one hand moodily, wondering whether a good smack across the back of the man’s head might get through his thick sku—. _  
  
_Sherlock’s thought process went blank when he felt a slight pressure against his skin. He turned his head to find John’s face directed towards the floor, but his shoulder pressed firmly against Sherlock’s own. _  
  
_“John,” Sherlock mouthed, then cleared his throat and said aloud, “John?” No response. _  
  
_Smothering the excitement rising in his throat, Sherlock scooted himself closer to John, sealing their sides together. He was rewarded a moment later when one calloused hand brushed John’s shoulder absentmindedly before dropping back to his lap. _  
  
_“You feel that, don’t you?” Sherlock had to grin. He couldn’t help it. “Oh I’ve been an __idiot__ \--” _  
  
_Naturally, John chose that moment to rise from the couch with a sharp grunt, pulling away from Sherlock completely. _  
  
_“No--!” Sherlock lurched to a stand as his flatmate went towards the kitchen, probably for a damn cup of tea. _“ _Idiot__.” Sherlock all but tackled John from behind, wrapping long arms around his flatmate’s chest. “Don’t think you can get rid of me just because I’m dead,” Sherlock threatened, aware of the giddiness in his voice. But he was so close, and if only John would-- _  
  
_John stopped abruptly to turn and look behind him, his brow furrowed. Sherlock took the brief opportunity to maneuver himself around his flatmate until he was clutching at John from the front rather than the back: a makeshift embrace in which John had no interest in participating. _  
  
_John took a long time to stare at the flat behind him, and when he turned back around his face was a mere breath from Sherlock’s collarbone. He didn’t give any indication of seeing Sherlock, but he didn’t try to move either, as if stuck in a heavy thought. After several seconds John clenched his eyes shut and muttered something that could have been “bloody Christ.”  
 _  
_“Idiot,” Sherlock repeated almost fondly before he lifted one hand and placed it against the back of John’s head. He kept it there, feeling the violent tremor of John’s body at the contact, before slowly and firmly pressing John’s head to his shoulder. There came a second tremor.  
 _  
_A long moment of silence.  
 _  
_John swallowed before haltingly bringing his hands up to meet Sherlock’s chest. They rested there, flighty and timorous.  
 _  
_“Yes, hello John,” Sherlock smiled into John’s hair, though he had no proof whether tactile awareness meant auditory awareness as well. John’s hands grew courage and pressed against him, and Sherlock found himself reciprocating.  
 _  
_“Sherlock.” The name came in a thin voice. It wasn’t a searching voice, Sherlock noted. Merely stating the name. _  
  
_“Yes, I knew you’d manage it in the end,” Sherlock rubbed small circles into John’s hair and allowed the man to lean into him with increasingly small, halting breaths. He hoped John wasn’t about to hyperventilate. That would be hugely inconvenient. _  
  
_But John was made of sterner stuff than that, and for several minutes he merely pressed himself against Sherlock as if hoping he’d manage to melt through if he kept it up long enough. Sherlock let him, because in all honesty, it felt _ _wonderful__  to reestablish something resembling contact with the living world _.  
  
_ “On a thought,” Sherlock murmured, “can you hear me?” _  
  
_No reply. _  
  
_“I see,” Sherlock tucked his mouth against John’s hair again and made a low hum of thought. _  
  
_“I’ve lost it,” John suddenly mumbled with a small laugh. He didn’t loosen his pressure against Sherlock, but his voice sounded thinner still. _  
  
_“Lost-- ah. You think you’re hallucinating.” Sherlock frowned. “I suppose in all fairness, I’d come to the same conclusion.” _  
  
_He felt himself rocking back and forth, and John moved with him uncomplainingly.

 _  
“_ This is bad, John,” John muttered to himself after a few minutes. “Ella’d be having a field day with this.”  
 _  
_“She’s also an idiot,” Sherlock pointed out. _  
  
_John shifted himself in Sherlock’s arms, then took a tentative step backwards. Sherlock tightened his grip, but in the odd way of his death, John seemed to break through without any difficulty. Sherlock grabbed John’s face instead, digging his fingernails unapologetically into his skin. _  
  
_“You feel me, you’re not hallucinating,” Sherlock said in a tight voice, running his thumb over John’s lips, because the body was much more sensitive there. “John!” John looked at Sherlock without seeing him, his face slipping into the hard expression from earlier. “John!” Sherlock insisted, louder. His fingers flew over eyelids, nose, lips, and nothing came of it. John was slipping away; hardening himself against Sherlock’s presence. _  
  
_Then John took a step forward and Sherlock was shoved aside, though not harshly. Sherlock trailed John doggedly into the kitchen, repeating the tackle-from-behind when John set a kettle on the stove. _  
  
_Nothing. _  
  
_Sherlock tightened his grip around John and buried his face in the man’s neck.

 _  
“ _John__ ,” he muttered. _  
  
_No shudder of recognition. No reaction. _  
  
 _Hateful_._

 _~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~  
  
The rows of houses are domestic and sleepy. Entirely innocuous. He walks down a clean, empty street and listens to his footsteps echo against identical buildings. He can’t remember when exactly he found the street, nor why it matters, nor why he keeps walking. He suspects he’ll remember in time._  
  
 _In the space between one step and the next he becomes aware of the man beside him. This one is young as well. But while the man from the city was afraid, this one is a simmering anger. He has dark hair and dark eyes, and while in his sister they conveyed serenity, in him they remind one of brooding skies._  
  
 _He glances up as the man settles in step with him. They move together quietly for a while._  
 _  
_So, have you already made it? _he asks instead, because he’s curious._ To wherever we’re all going.  _The man gives him an odd look, and he realizes that the anger is also ringed with fatigue.  
  
_ No, _the man says._ Otherwise I wouldn’t be here. _  
  
He has to suppose that makes some sense.  
  
_ What happens when we get there? _he asks, then fervently hopes the man ignores him. He can’t handle the thought of knowing.  
  
_ How should I know? _the man asks dully.  
  
They keep walking.  
  
_ How much have you given up? _the man asks in the tone of a reluctant school boy.  
  
_ Some _, he says._ You? _  
  
_Some _, the man parrots. Then,_ You go first. _  
  
He complies, because he doesn’t feel like arguing. He pauses, and the man follows suit.  
  
_ I had a family _, he says, and he can tell by the stricken look in the man’s eyes that he still holds that part of himself._  A mum. A dad. I remember being bossed around by someone older than me, but not that much older. I remember being told to come visit at holidays and never looking forward to it, because of the arguments. I remember loving and hating them at the same time. _He sighs as these parts of himself leave and take residence in the empty, nice houses. A good breeze could knock him over at this point, he feels sure of it. He looks to the man and waits._  
 _  
The man shakes his head._ I hate this, _he mutters.  
  
_ I met your sister, _he says suddenly, because he feels he should. The man stares at him.  
  
_ Has she let me go yet? _he asks in a husky voice.  
  
_ I don’t know. _  
  
The man swears and looks away._ I used to do so much hiding _, he launches into a swift voice._ I hid old, old things that would end up on wealthy peoples’ shelves. I tricked and snuck, for clean water and fresh food. _  
  
The man falls silent, because not much needs to be said to start the memories. He watches as the man shimmers with lost self. It’s done swiftly, and when the man glances at him, he thinks some of the fatigue is gone.  
  
_ Good luck, _the man says in a low voice. Then he turns and walks towards one of the houses.  
  
_ You too _, he calls back, and watches the door swing shut. The houses aren’t for him. He turns and keeps going down the street._  
  
 _The tree is there, in viewing distance.  
  
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~  
  
_ John left the flat the next day with his gun tucked in his waistband and his cane left behind. He strode forward without a hitch in his step, his movements purposeful. _  
  
_Sherlock tagged behind and had to admit that he felt odd doing so. Usually he’d be in pursuit of a lead, or on his way to Bart’s and John would be just a step behind him. Sherlock tucked his chin in his scarf and contemplated this newest change in the order of things. _  
  
_After several blocks, Sherlock grew bored of deducing people’s personal lives and instead quickened his pace to bump shoulders with John experimentally. John swayed without noticing, and his pace never missed a beat.  
 _  
_Sherlock fell back with a huff. He’d spent most of last night reviewing his breakthrough with John. He’d decided that some level of emotional vulnerability had opened John to his presence. Moriarty stealing Lestrade, Mycroft’s presence. Possibly Sherlock’s own…feelings had helped things along. _  
  
_And then John had told himself he was hallucinating and, like a good soldier, a good doctor, had pushed his emotions under the rug all too well. Frustrating, but to be expected. _  
  
_Of course, in the end, Sherlock could only hypothesize all of this, even if he thought it was a particularly _ _good__  hypothesis. Unfortunately he couldn’t test it, not easily. John had kept his army surgeon demeanor firmly in place over the last few hours. It covered him like a second skin, and Sherlock found that it was indifferent to his touches. Infuriating. _  
  
_So Sherlock trailed John because all he needed was a trigger, something, so they could get back to establishing Sherlock’s continued existence. He had several ideas, as to how to start communication with John, and if only he could— _  
  
_Sherlock made a sound of surprise when John stopped short. He followed his flatmate’s gaze to find a familiar black car rounding the corner. Sherlock felt himself grin momentarily as John turned and casually strolled into a clothing store a few paces away. He glanced back at the car as he followed John. He didn’t think Mycroft was in the car at the moment; more likely receiving hourly reports. _  
  
_John led them past racks of garish clothes before he ducked through a doorway labeled “Employees Only.” From there he quickly maneuvered his way to a small door that led to an alleyway, where he surprised a young woman smoking a cigarette. John ignored her and made his way back to the street he just had been on. When they reemerged, the black car was gone. _  
  
_Sherlock glanced at John amusedly. “You seem to have managed to pick up a few things from me,” he commented.  
 _  
_John swiftly crossed the street, even quicker now if it was possible, and Sherlock suddenly realized where his flatmate must be heading. _  
  
_Hyde Park. It loomed greenly among the buildings and concrete, filled with children and dogs and their respective caretakers. Sherlock took in the location as he and John entered, wondering whether Mycroft had had the foresight to have any agents on foot. The car would be useless here. _  
  
_John cut through the gentle crowds and Sherlock followed, all too aware that he knew exactly what John was up to. They kept moving forward until John saw an innocuous bench, sitting beneath an old elm. He steered for it, sitting heavily and stiffly once he got there. Sherlock remained standing, crossing his arms and feeling his coat whip from the winter wind. _  
  
_“So,” he said flatly, “we’re just going to wait here until Moriarty makes his move?” _  
  
_Of course John was going wait, Sherlock thought a second later. Wasn’t that what soldiers did much of the time in Afghanistan? Waited for the enemy, endured hours of nothing for the five minutes of action? _  
  
_Sherlock tilted his head and huffed sharply into the air. “You’re thinking heroics again,” he complained. “Moriarty isn’t a Taliban rebel fighter.” _  
  
_John shifted himself on the bench, looking around at the flow of humanity surrounding him. His flatmate looked perfectly at ease with himself, for the casual passerby. He could easily have been people-watching out of sheer boredom. Only Sherlock saw the fighter in his element. The patrol on the lookout for the one thing that didn’t seem right. _  
  
_“John, you insufferable…” Sherlock shook his head and found he couldn’t quite finish the sentence. He sat heavily on the bench beside John instead, avoiding a second shoulder bump because he knew John was anything but vulnerable at the moment. _  
  
_Instead he remained silently beside John, watching the people passing and trying to read who could be a Moriarty man, a Mycroft man. An hour and a half passed before John stood and strolled along the paths. Sherlock followed him to a second, equally innocuous bench where they repeated the waiting game. They kept it up for two hours before John switched his position once more. By the time they were on their fourth repeat of this little stratagem, midday had become early evening. Children emptied out to make room for young couples. The dogs were still there. _  
  
_Sherlock hovered at the edge of his invisible connection to John, peering at a woman reading a fashion magazine several benches over and wondering whether she was one of Mycroft’s people. She may prove useful in case John’s ridiculous plan brought— _  
  
_Sherlock physically started when he saw him. He didn’t look obviously injured, but Sherlock knew that didn’t really mean anything. John saw him only seconds later. _  
  
_Sherlock glimpsed his flatmate nearly stand before thinking better of it and remaining seated, though no doubt vibrating with the effort of remaining still. _  
  
_Sherlock left him and jogged up to the man, dimly aware of the tightness in his chest.

 _  
_“You’re as bad as John,” he greeted Lestrade, swiftly scanning the DI for any obvious signs of a hidden bomb. _  
  
_But no; Lestrade’s rumpled shirt and jacket remained unfettered by any oddly shaped lumps, no wires sticking out of odd places. Instead Sherlock found a yellow-green bruise swathed across the DI’s left eye and temple, a possibly broken arm (based on the way Lestrade held it close to his body) and several minor cuts and bruises. Possible concussion, since the man looked slightly disoriented and his eyes failed to dilate properly when he looked into the setting sun before him. _  
  
_Sherlock also found the little earpiece nestled just below graying hair. _  
  
_Sherlock exhaled sharply; he’d have thought that Moriarty could manage a little more creativity than that. Granted, he’s skipped on the Semtex this time, but still. It all had a certain déjà vu feel. _  
  
_Lestrade stopped walking abruptly, and Sherlock accidentally made several extra paces. He found himself directly in between the standing DI and the seated doctor. Both waited. John wasn’t stupid, he’d have seen the plastic coiling from Lestrade’s ear by now. He knew exactly what to expect, as did Sherlock. _  
  
_Which was why what happened next threw them both off guard. _  
  
_Lestrade abruptly pitched forward. A spray of blood exploded from his right leg and chest. John instinctively lurched forward to catch the DI while Sherlock whipped around and tried to pinpoint the location of the shooter. There hadn’t been an audible gunshot, which meant a stealth shooter with a muffler at a fair distance away. This admittedly made things more difficult. There was a copse of trees in the near distance that seemed a likely location, but Sherlock could tell it was too far from John for him to investigate _.  
  
_ Sherlock looked down to find John applying pressure to the wound on Lestrade’s chest, his face tight. He was mumbling something in a low voice to Lestrade, but Sherlock couldn’t make it out. Before he could properly appreciate the futility of it, Sherlock dropped to his knees beside John, ripped off his scarf, and pressed it down on Lestrade’s leg wound. _  
  
_He leaned down with as much weight as he could manage, but his scarf remained blue and unstained. Lestrade was saying something to John now, his voice low and rough and inaudible over Sherlock’s loud huffs and the pounding in his ears as he tried to throw himself into halting the DI’s blood flow. _  
  
_He became dimly aware of the small crowd gathering around John and Lestrade, the people clutching uselessly at phones and asking whether they should call an ambulance, others saying they already had, a woman shouting something hysterically and all of them being loud and insufferable and couldn’t they shut up because the least idiotic DI Scotland Yard had to offer was bleeding into the ground and Sherlock _ _couldn’t damn well do anything about it._  
  
_ “There’s an ambulance coming, people, please back away. He’s a doctor, please give him room,” a woman’s voice came through Sherlock’s haze. He became aware of a whiff of perfume (fairly high-end, a woman with money or a well-to-do husband) and then a new presence kneeling beside the DI, across from John. _  
  
_“Pressure to the leg,” John grunted to her, and as if the words had some added effect, Sherlock suddenly felt something warm and damp weigh at the scarf. He blinked down at the bloom of red, then increased the pressure. Lestrade cursed loudly. _  
  
_The next moment the woman had shifted so she crouched across from Sherlock. She had striped off her jacket and wadded it up, pressing it over Sherlock’s hands. Sherlock didn’t pull away, letting the woman add her living weight to his dead one. A bit of blood on his scarf didn’t mean he was helping Lestrade _.  
  
_ Sherlock chanced a glance up at the woman and felt a small lurch in his gut when he recognized her as Mycroft’s BlackBerry-tapping assistant. She had her hair pulled up, wearing decidedly civilian clothes, and her expression was one of fierce concentration rather than the vaguer look he was used to. _  
  
_Lestrade cursed again, and Mycroft’s assistant looked to John. _  
  
_“Mr. Holmes has sent one of his private ambulances. It should be here any minute.”

 _  
_John nodded once, but his attention remained focused on the bleeding man beneath his hands. Sherlock wondered whether this was what John had looked like in war, with sand rather than neatly trimmed grass surrounding him and army fatigues rather than a stained jumper. _  
  
_Sherlock felt his fingers growing damp and tacky with Lestrade’s blood. He thought, for a brief moment, that there may have been an answering dampness seeping through his hair but honestly, he had more important things to consider. The shooter, namely. The only good thing the gawking crowd was doing at the moment was serving as a shield against any really clear shots the shooter might have for John, Lestrade, or Mycroft’s assistant. But that didn’t mean there wouldn’t be a second chance, nor that the shooter wouldn’t take advantage of it. _  
  
_The sound of an ambulance wailed into Sherlock’s hearing. Minutes later there came a fresh rush of humanity as several paramedics surrounded the small group. John and Mycroft’s assistant stood, as did Sherlock after a moment’s reluctance. He peeled his scarf away from Lestrade’s leg, narrowing his eyes at the bullet wound before a paramedic descended on the man’s body to shift him onto a stretcher. _  
  
_Sherlock held the bloody scarf in one hand, almost like an offering, and waited to observe whether Lestrade’s blood had some sort of effect on the cloth or himself as far as visibility. _  
  
_It didn’t. That, or no one was paying enough attention to notice. _  
  
_Sherlock turned his head incrementally and realized that Mycroft’s assistant was already ushering John away from the paramedics and the staring crowd, her BlackBerry visible in her hand. _  
  
_Sherlock stuffed the scarf in his pocket and jogged to catch up. The assistant was talking as she focused on the little screen. _  
  
_“--have to take you immediately to a safe location. Mr. Holmes has people searching for the shooter as we speak—“ _  
  
_“They won’t find him,” John said. He sounded oddly at ease, not even struggling against the firm grip on his upper arm. The assistant allowed him a single glance that didn’t say much. _  
  
_“Detective Inspector Lestrade will be taken to a private hospital and questioned as soon as he is in stable condition,” she continued smoothly. “We’ll contact you with information as soon as it becomes available to us.” _  
  
_For a fleeting moment, Sherlock had to consider that there was some usefulness in Mycroft’s nosiness. If only for the sake of unexpectedly wounded DIs. _  
  
_“Oh look, it’s the same car,” John said in a dead-pan voice. They had reached the edge of the park to find the car waiting for them on the border between greenery and concrete. A man in an understated suit came out and opened the passenger door. John and Mycroft’s assistant were perhaps six meters away when John made a sudden move that involved driving his elbow into the assistant’s solar plexus before throwing his fist up towards her face. _  
  
_She gasped and doubled over from the blow to her gut, but managed to throw her own block against John’s aim for her face. She closed her hand in a lock around his wrist, but she was still unsteady enough that John managed to wrench himself free from her before sprinting away from the car. _  
  
_Sherlock followed without thought, a wild laugh bubbling from his throat as he heard Mycroft’s people make pursuit. He all but felt John throw himself into the pumping of legs and the forcing of air in and out of lungs and it was glorious. _  
  
_John led them back into the city, down streets and alleys, through buildings a few times, past flats and business locations. Sherlock once again marveled at the feeling of following John, at having no clue where they would turn next, whether John had any idea where he was going. He found he couldn’t care. _  
  
_When they finally stopped, Hyde Park lay far behind them. They were at a community center that Sherlock recognized as the location of a murder he’d investigated several years ago. _  
  
_The sky had grown decidedly dim at this point, and the street lights had already flickered on to bathe them in a sickly orange glow. _  
  
_Sherlock heard John breathing hard beside him, a wild giggle hidden in the gasps. “Christ,” John muttered. “I hit a woman.” _  
  
_“It’s the twenty-first century, John,” Sherlock said, out of breath, “and if I’m correct, she wasn’t one’s typical assistant. Her association with Mycroft should indicate that much.” _  
  
_John didn’t answer, just breathed. Sherlock took in their surroundings. The street was moderately busy with cars and foot traffic as the evening crowd settled in. He didn’t see anything that looked immediately suspicious, but then neither Mycroft’s nor Moriarty’s people were known for being conspicuous. _  
  
_Sherlock huffed in amusement. “On the run from the British government and a criminal mastermind,” he told John. “Somehow I’m not surprised.” _  
  
_Only John wasn’t really on the run from Moriarty, Sherlock recalled a moment later. Not if his ridiculous little plan today in the park indicated anything. And the worst part, Sherlock considered as he puffed at dirty, cold air, was that it had worked. _  
  
_Sherlock frowned as he considered the little performance Moriarty had set up with Lestrade. A warning, obviously. But why had the shooter not killed the DI outright? Sherlock had no doubt that Moriarty hired anyone but the best, so it couldn’t have been a matter of a bad shot. Lestrade had been left alive intentionally, and Sherlock couldn’t deny the sense of foreboding it brought. _  
  
_The earpiece had been subtlely clever as well, Sherlock had to admit. Misdirection: the key element in any well-laid trap. Only John hadn’t been caught in this trap. Or had he? _  
  
_The possibly-trapped man in question made a low groan and slid down to a sit. Sherlock considered the dirty blond hair hovering at his waist and then on impulse placed his hand on it. _  
  
_His mouth quirked as John stiffened and threw one hand up to brush at his head. Sherlock pressed down against John’s skull, digging his fingers into the short hair under his fingers. _  
  
_John paused his blind search before he wrenched his hand away and went to an abrupt stand. Sherlock kept his own hand in place, then had to remove it when John strode forward, towards the street. _  
  
_“Fucking mental,” Sherlock heard, before they entered into the bustle of London after dark. _  
  
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~  
  
The surf comes in quietly. It’s a shushing noise, like the sound a mother makes to a child. He is enjoying the familiarity of the sound when an old man in old clothes is standing beside him._  
  
 _He turns his head because it is polite. The man looks at him exactingly, with wry bitterness that understands itself. His round glasses catch the light.  
  
_ I think I’m glad I’m not the one to carry you _, the old man says._  
 _  
_Why? _he asks.  
  
_ There’s too much you drag with you still. I’d not make it far, _the old man replies, looking frumpy and tired.  
  
He finds it hard to believe the old man. He can feel himself growing thin and whispy. He’s let go of so much of himself, but now he finds that he’s nearing the heart of things.  
  
_ I remember the cases _, he says in a low voice, apropos of nothing._ I remember that they made me live. _He pauses._ I remember how you killed them one by one, then that you fell, and I remember how it was the start of him and I.  _The old man nods, because it’s true and there’s no room for falsehoods here._  I remember thinking I could run around with…with him forever. _He laughs._ I remember annoying the police, and the Chinese food, and coming back to the flat at six in the morning. _  
  
The memories flicker in front of his eyes as they leave him. He feels genuine sadness for their loss as they take flight in the sea wind, followed by a dull ache once they’re gone._  
  
 _The last memory is one he didn’t realize he valued so much until it’s nearly out of his grasp. He sees the two of them, one tall and dark, the other short and fair. They’re running, sprinting across cities because they can, and they will, and it’s a glorious mess of thudding footsteps and tight breath and the persistent awareness of the other’s presence._  
  
 _He almost feels like crying when the memory slips from him, and then the cry cuts off partway through, because the experience is no longer his to cry over. Still, he wonders who will find his old memories, his old self, scattered as it is across the world._  
  
 _He feels barely tangible. The memories he just released must have been denser than he realized._  
 _  
_That is better _, the old man admits._ You still carry the heaviest, though. _  
  
He places an unthinking hand to his chest and knows that the old man is right. But he cannot possibly drop that part of himself. Not yet._  
  
 _Instead he looks to the old man with sudden curiosity._ Am I to carry you?  _he asks, because in whatever’s left of him, he has managed to recall that he once knew this man, and that he’d been there when he’d died. He recalls a sudden bullet careening through a window, a pill glinting plastically in fluorescent light.  
  
_ If you need to _. He thinks on this, then nods._

  
_And so he ends up carrying what’s left of the old man along the receding tide, towards a tree that rattles its leaves at him._

_~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~_

John ended up not returning to the flat, and Sherlock found he couldn’t blame him. They made their way to a small diner, the sort with tea that tasted like dirty dishwater but came cheap enough that you didn’t complain. 

 

 

John ordered from a waitress (bored with her job, just broke up with a boyfriend, flirting with John) and commenced staring at a dingy white wall with exhaustion sunk into the bags under his eyes.

Sherlock sat across from John and watched him, deducing the items foremost on his flatmate’s mind. Worry for Lestrade, betrayed by the slight crease between his eyes that Sherlock recognized from when he used to get injured and John had to patch him up. John’s anger at himself for being fooled, indicated by the way he was grinding his teeth together. Pent frustration and anger towards Moriarty, in the set of his brow.

Sherlock’s observations were interrupted when John’s attention snapped towards the TV set up in a corner of the diner. The evening news was playing, and John suddenly launched to a stand, to turn the volume up. Sherlock twisted around in his seat, hit with a sudden sense of déjà vu.

It took him a moment to recognize that he and John had been here once, during the first chase with Moriarty. Strange, for things to come full circle.

“--explosion in Hyde Park. Witnesses report--“

Sherlock’s attention locked on the TV.

“--death toll is still unknown. Police are on the scene--“

Sherlock twisted back around in his seat, his fingers hovering at his temples. Had he missed a bomb on Lestrade when he’d seen him? Could have been in a pocket. Already on the ambulance? Less possible, no—

“--authorities say there is no evidence of terrorist activity—“

Implanted in Lestrade’s body? Extravagant, messy, possible for someone like Moriarty. Lestrade had been in the man’s hands for over twenty fours hours, possible—

“Fuck,” John’s voice comes low.

“Ah!” Sherlock snapped his head up, his mouth agape. The earpiece: a disguise. A double-misdirection. Send a message to Mycroft: I am dangerous. Moriarty blaming Mycroft for Sherlock’s death? Plausible. Other intended recipient of the message: John. Message: You can’t escape.

Sherlock brought his gaze up as John stalked past his table, towards the exit. He stood quickly and followed, entering the brisk air with a small huff. John was already moving down the sidewalk.

Sherlock glanced around them as he followed, as perfectly aware as John seemed to be that there was no such thing as running or hiding by now. There was merely choosing the place to meet. Naturally, John was moving away from the crowds, the innocent civilians. The soldier again.

Sherlock was surprised to feel himself shiver, and he quickened his pace so that his coat brushed John’s when they both swayed in the right direction. They walked for several minutes, and as they moved the streetlights became fewer, the crowds thinner and more questionable. John never seemed to hesitate as he led them into areas of the city more filled by factories and warehouses than people. Probably what he was aiming for.

The attack came swiftly and professionally.

Sherlock saw the men approaching seconds before John did, at which point his flatmate froze and watched the pair approach him.

“You don’t need to knock me out this time,” he called out, his voice solid.

( _Death wish_ , Mycroft had called it.)

The men didn’t break stride. Several more steps, and they were nearly within arm’s reach from John. At which point one of them, a large man with a Grecian profile and blond hair, raised his hand. Sherlock let out a wordless yell just as a shot echoed against the concrete walls. John let out a strangled shout before staggering backwards and sinking to the ground, his hands clamped over his thigh. The blond man fell back and watched his accomplice, a fellow with a smooth, shaved head, brandish a crowbar that had been shoved through his belt.

John half raised his arm, blood dripping from his hand. It didn’t stop the crowbar from meeting his skull with a loud crack.

Sherlock leapt on the shaved man with the crowbar, snarling like an animal. He felt the man stagger in surprise at the weight, and hardly had a moment to enjoy his triumph before an elbow connected with his ribs, breaking his tenuous grasp on the man’s shoulders. He landed on the ground, his head snapping painfully against concrete.

“What the hell?” the crowbar man rasped. (Smoker for ten plus years. From Sussex, based on the accent.)

“What?” the gunman asked. (Lived in South Africa for several years, again based on the accent. Likely the shooter from Hyde Park? Grew up in-- oh hell what did it matter?)

Sherlock cut off the thoughts concerning the attackers, opting to crawl towards John’s unmoving form on the pavement. He saw the blood pooling from John’s temple and thigh and felt a second wave of hot anger swell over him.

“John,” the word dropped heavily from his mouth.

(Why did John always  _do_  this to him?)

“John,” Sherlock repeated, because it was all he could force from his numb tongue. He drew his knees up under him and bent down to peer at John’s face. Unconscious. But breathing still, so good. Sherlock placed a hand on John’s bullet wound and pressed down. Like with Lestrade, his hand remained clean.

He was useless at this point, Sherlock realized dumbly. Couldn’t attack. Couldn’t heal. Couldn’t even call for help. Sherlock found he hated being useless. It was odd and new and unhelpful. He leaned further over John, as if he could protect his flatmate’s body from the world by his mere presence.

Two pairs of burly arms suddenly descended upon John, lifting him limply in the air and away from Sherlock.

“Get off!” Sherlock snapped, lurching to a stand and digging his fingers between the men’s hands and John’s clothes. Not that it helped. Not that it ever would.

Sherlock let his hands drop and wrapped his arm around the shaved man’s neck instead. This elicited a much better reaction, one involving the man pausing and making an odd coughing noise.

“What now?” the blond companion asked irritably. “You sick?”

“Shut up,” the shaved man snapped. He shifted John’s feet and kept moving backwards. Sherlock felt himself being shoved aside, staggering away as the men continued towards the van.

He followed them doggedly, watching with something he had to recognize as panic, as a third man leapt from the van and opened the back doors. John was shoved in like a sack of flour and the shaved man crawled in. Sherlock followed suit just as the gunman slammed the doors behind him. The shaved man dragged John further into the van before pulling duct tape out from some dim corner and beginning to bind John’s wrists and ankles. He found the gun in John’s waistband halfway through the procedure and took it out curiously. He examined it before tucking it next to the crowbar.

“Coward,” Sherlock spat in the man’s face, his hands trembling. He could feel his heart ricocheting against his ribcage. “I’ll kill you.”

The threat fell on deaf ears, but that didn’t make it any less vehement. Sherlock turned from the man and dropped to a kneel beside John, placing one unsteady hand on his shoulder.

The van engine rumbled to a start at that moment, and they lurched forward, the two men up front exchanging some paltry joke. John’s head lolled about dangerously on the dirty floor, so Sherlock maneuvered himself so that he was sitting cross-legged, then gently placed John’s head in his lap. He knew that in all probability he wasn’t actually having any effect, but damn if that was about to stop him. Instead he leaned over his flatmate, examining the wound from the crowbar again as best he could in the dim light. Down by John’s feet, the shaved man finished with the duct tape by wrapping it a few times around John’s thigh, inexpertly sealing off the bullet wound. He tossed the tape back into its corner again, before slumping against the wall and lighting a cigarette. Someone up front complained about the stink.

Sherlock placed his hands on either side of John’s lined face, focusing on his eyelids as they flickered restlessly. He remained in that position as the van jostled and swayed them along the busy London streets.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The men carried John into an abandoned office building, on the eastern edge of London. They did it shabbily, uncaringly, and when they dumped him on the concrete floor of the building’s basement John’s head bounced slightly on impact. Sherlock made an involuntary sound, from his position behind the men. He kneeled to reclaim John’s head as soon as the three man had retreated to the wall, cradling it in his hands while letting his thumb stroke his flatmate’s temples in a thoughtless pattern.

“John,” he muttered, eyeing the room. “You’re not going to die. Not here. You’ll die an old man with a wife and children in some cottage in the country.”

It was the first time in a long time he’d made such emotional, unfounded claims, but John seemed to have that effect on him.

Moriarty was there, suddenly, emerging from the shadows in the corner of the basement. He had a penchant for dramatic entrances, and this one was no exception, even if his victim wasn’t conscious enough to appreciate it. Sherlock watched him from the corner of his eye, but most of his attention remained on John. Sherlock was already dead, after all. Moriarty suddenly seemed frivolous and distant, with his beating heart and working lungs, hands that had no trouble moving magazines and guns, a voice that could be heard. Sherlock had much less, and he realized it was for his own benefit.

Moriarty took several slow, ponderous steps towards John before he halted. He waited then, his hands clasped behind his back, his face pleasant and patient. Sherlock brought both eyes back to John.

“John,” he said louder, because why should Moriarty hear him at this point? “You’re not going to die.” The words came out harsher than he meant.

John’s eyes cracked open at that moment, and Sherlock stared down into dark blue eyes with a sudden sense of weightlessness. The pupils focused on him instantly, although with some trouble, and the crease that indicated confusion appeared on John’s nose.

“Sherlock,” John breathed. Sherlock didn’t move, afraid that if he did then the pupils wouldn’t follow him and John would still be staring at a dim and dirty concrete ceiling. Then John lifted his bound hands, brushing them against Sherlock’s hair. Sherlock had to suppress the shudder that ran through him when John’s fingers captured one of his dark curls. His thumb came up to rub against it thoughtfully. “Christ,” John murmured. “Never thought I’d see you again.”

Sherlock let out an odd choking sound.

“Delusional, Doctor. Oh now that  _is_  sweet,” Moriarty began walking again. Sherlock and John both looked towards the consulting criminal as he strode forward. His smile was different this time, Sherlock noted. Not quite as easy; more strained. He suspected he was witnessing an angry Moriarty. Interesting.

“Your minions were eager to earn their pay,” John slurred, his fingers retaining their grip on Sherlock’s hair.

“They just enjoy a job well-done,” Moriarty shrugged easily. He paused so that he stood above John’s prone form, his hands in his pockets. Sherlock lowered his head defensively, pulling John further into his lap.

John grunted. Moriarty continued his inane smile. The part of Sherlock’s mind not preoccupied with John or Moriarty took note of this, thinking back to magazines and toppling stacks of paper. Of makeshift embraces in 221B.

“I  _am_  glad to see you, pet,” Moriarty crouched beside John and made to push his still-raised hands down again. John resisted, his face growing stubborn.

“John,” Sherlock reached up and gently disengaged John’s fingers from his hair, placing his bound hands on the dirty jumper. “Relax. I’m still here.” John glanced at him anxiously, and Sherlock tried to smile in return.

“Thank you,” Moriarty shifted himself and leaned forward, heedless of Sherlock’s presence a hand’s breadth away. “So, Johnny-boy. Did you enjoy my handiwork with Mr. Winters? Oh, and our favorite Detective Inspector was fun too, wasn’t he?” Moriarty reached out and ran one finger along John’s face. Sherlock had to resist the urge to slap it away.

John stared at Moriarty stoically. Moriarty laughed. “A soldier to the end,” he said in a sing-song voice that sounded as oddly strained as his smile had looked. “How dear.”

Sherlock huffed frustratedly, drawing his arms around John’s shoulders and letting one hand rest over John’s chest. He could feel the man’s heartbeat beneath his fingers. It was quick and stuttering.

“See, I couldn’t make this a game,” Moriarty continued, his finger tracing John’s eyes, his lips. “Poor Sherlock was the only one who could really play. You wouldn’t imagine how boring it is to move you dunderheads around. You I was hoping might have gotten some of his fire but…” Moriarty shrugged and let his finger drift away from John’s face. “You think I’m going to kill you,” Moriarty announced as he stood. “Which I am. Useless dogs need to be put down, after all.” His voice turned ugly. “Couldn’t even save your own genius. Selfish, selfish. Now I have no one to play with.”

Sherlock saw John’s eyes flash towards him, his heartbeat running faster.

“But you see,” Moriarty clapped his hands together, his voice rising in pitch, “since you lost your genius, I decided you can come live with me for awhile. That sounds fun, doesn’t it?” John’s lips remained closed, but his eyes said plenty. It made Moriarty laugh, a wild unbalanced thing. He cut it off abruptly and grinned too hard at John. “I am going to tear you apart piece by piece, sweetie.”

John made a wild lunging movement towards Moriarty, but he was still dazed from being knocked out and blood loss, not to mention the fact that his hands and feet remained bound. Moriarty merely took a step back. John slumped partly out of Sherlock’s lap, breathing heavily.

Moriarty giggled. “Feisty,” he cooed, then looked into the dimness.

“Moran, is the car ready?” he asked, and three sulking shadows lifted their heads at the voice.

“Ready,” the blond gunman agreed.

“Get him in.”

It was all going wrong, all wrong. The men were approaching and John was too dazed and pliable in Sherlock’s arms. Moriarty strode away without a backwards glance, his whistle echoing across the basement. Sherlock hooked his arms under John’s armpits and tried to haul him up.

“Sherlock?” John’s voice came wild and sharp, and the next moment two of the men had grabbed John again and ripped him from Sherlock’s grasp.

Sherlock leapt to a stand as John struggled and snarled, his bound fists whipping up to graze Moran’s chin. Sherlock strode forward, his mind bypassing conscious thought as he wrapped his hand around the gun shoved unprofessionally in the shaved man’s belt. He swung it up to the shaved man’s face, turned off the safety, and fired.

The shot rang inside Sherlock’s head and he knew for an instant that he didn’t have the real handgun, merely some imitation that was his own imagining.

Only then John toppled to the ground with a loud grunt, because the shaved man’s hands had abruptly released him. The man looked surprised beyond words at the neat hole in the center of his forehead.

The basement echoed gently with the thud he made against the concrete.

John proceeded to waste no time, slamming his bound legs into Moran’s knees and toppling him to the ground as well. John took his joined fists and lunged forward so he could drive them into the man’s face.

Sherlock whipped around and shot the third man in the chest, who had just enough time to curse before his lungs filled with blood. He hit the ground hard, for he was a large man. Sherlock finished Moran off for John, feeling an extra surge of vindictive pleasure for Lestrade’s sake. He didn’t  _need_  to shoot Moran, exactly, based on the mess that had once been the man’s nose, but he didn’t like to leave any chances.

John lay on the ground beside the three dead men, his breath coming hard and fast. Sherlock suspected shock, along with blood loss and the concussion. He bent down in one smooth motion and hooked his arm around John’s waist. John’s hands came up to grip at his coat. Together they managed to haul John to a stand, though he swayed violently. Sherlock wrapped his arm around John’s shoulders and tucked him firmly into his side, ridiculously gratified by the way John leaned into him.

Sherlock and John then focused their attention on Moriarty. He watched them with his hands in his pockets. His grin was easy, his eyes dangerous.

“Clever,” he drawled, and Sherlock followed the man’s line of sight to realize he was focused on the gun. No doubt a floating gun, as far as he was concerned. Moriarty’s eyes betrayed his easy tone of voice. They were too wide, too edgy.

“A few tricks,” John slurred, sending a half-grin towards Sherlock. Sherlock realized he was grinning back.

“Who are you smiling at?” Moriarty suddenly snapped. His eyes never left the gun. “What the hell—“

Sherlock fired. Moriarty staggered backwards. He looked confused and so very human then, as he groped at the blossom of red on his white shirt with empty fingers.

Sherlock dropped the gun to the floor and turned away as the man died. John’s breathing remained labored and he didn’t need his flatmate passing out in his tremulously substantial arms.

“You all right?” he asked. John tore his eyes from Moriarty’s body and stared at Sherlock, hard.

“You wanker. You’ve been alive the whole time?” he asked, in a voice that couldn’t decide whether it was angry or relieved or ecstatic. Sherlock felt something in his chest drop.

“No,” he admitted. “I’m afraid I’m very much dead.”

“Right,” John shut his eyes briefly. “I thought so, because I saw you die.” He snorted. “Figures, actually, for you to ignore dying so you could finish this.” He took a deep breath, swaying again. “Fuck, am I hallucinating?”

“Unless you somehow killed four men while tied up with duct tape and suffering from a concussion and blood loss.”

John laughed tiredly. “Maybe it’s like  _Fight Club_ ,” he said.

“What?”

“Never mind.” John looked at Sherlock again, more intently. “You’re some sort of ghost then?”

“If you want to be pedantic.” Sherlock blinked hard then, because somehow, inexplicably, his eyes had grown hot again, and if he really wanted to think about it, perhaps his hair was growing heavy again with blood and a painful headache. “But I’m certainly not alive anymore, John,” he said. He paused. “It’s not pleasant.”

“It was you yesterday, wasn’t it?” John asked suddenly. “I felt something, and I thought it was you but you were dead.”

“I’m still dead.”

“Right.” John winced and he leaned even harder against Sherlock. “My head feels like hell. Leg too.”

“Do you want to sit down?”

“Better.”

Sherlock guided John to a sit, keeping his arm around the man’s waist. He settled himself on the ground as well. John dropped his head unapologetically onto Sherlock’s shoulder with a sound that was half sigh and half groan.

“Do you have your cell phone with you?” Sherlock asked softly.

“Yeah,” John nodded. “Should I call Mycroft?”

“Unnecessary. They’re tracking the signal. I give them fifteen minutes.”

There came a long silence. “God, I missed you,” John said.

Sherlock tightened his grasp around John. “I’ve been there the whole time,” he admitted. “You were never able to perceive me, not until yesterday.”

John swore tiredly. “And now?” he asked.

Sherlock shook his head.

“I don’t know.”

John seemed content with the answer, or he was too tired to argue. Either way, he remained silent against Sherlock’s side, his breath finally starting to slow. Sherlock turned his head so he could press his mouth into John’s hair and breath in the scent of tea and cheap shampoo. He’d never done it before, and he didn’t know whether he’d ever be able to do it again.

They sat silently for several long minutes, among the cooling bodies of the dead.  
The sound of pounding footsteps and loud voices sometime later heralded Mycroft’s arrival. John’s head stirred on Sherlock’s shoulder, and he shifted it so he could peer at Sherlock with hazy eyes.

“I’m going to sound like a romance novel heroine,” he mumbled, “but don’t go. If you can help it.”

Sherlock slipped one hand into John’s and squeezed.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

_He follows the moors. He realizes that he could have been walking the same misty hillocks since the beginning of time, and he could not have remembered. There is so little he remembers at this point._

_The man waits for him as a silhouette in the curtained light. He wears a dark suit, and his sleepy eyes watch him with something too sharp to be called weariness.  
He stops several paces away from the man. _

I still remember you, a little,  _he says after some time. He is vaguely aware that he would once have felt fear, or anger towards this man. But in this moor, things are different. The man in the suit shrugs easily, a light smile playing on his lips._

Same,  _the man offers._  You and your companion.

_He nods._  Do you remember any of our names?

No.

_He nods again._  I gave your name up a long time ago,  _he admits._  And my own I think I lost a few hills back.  _He pauses for a long moment._  But I still remember his name. I remember almost everything about him, I think.

Very sweet,  _the man tells him, although something in his voice doesn’t sound sincere._

I can carry you for a while,  _he offers to the suited man nonetheless, because it seems proper, just as it had with the old man, so very long ago. The man in the suit makes an odd face._

I don’t need you to carry me,  _he says._

_He makes a noncommittal sound and suppresses the whim to ask the suited man whether, perhaps, he ought to be making the offer back._

Then why are you here?  _he asks instead. The man shoves his hands into his pockets and stares hard into the hills purpled with heather._

We’re all headed somewhere,  _he says._  No one’s managed to tell me where we’re going or why.

_He thinks back to when he wondered the same thing. He realizes that he hasn’t thought about it for a while now._

You want me to tell you?  _he asks the man._

Don’t be ridiculous, you don’t know,  _the man says sullenly. That is true, he has to admit._

_He considers the man, how solid he is, how much of himself he still possesses. It occurs to him that, perhaps, the suited man will have difficulty giving himself up. Perhaps in time he’ll grow too tired to walk, because no one will offer to carry him, and he’ll make no offer in return. Perhaps he’ll lie down on the moor and never get up again, never reach wherever they’re all going in favor of becoming grown over with grass and heather._

_Or perhaps he’ll make it in the end, like anyone else._

_It’s hard to say._

Good luck, anyhow,  _he tells the man, and he finds that he means it. The man lifts his chin thoughtfully._

I don’t remember names, but I still know I…hurt you, I suppose.

I think you did. Why do you mention it?

_The suited man goes back to staring at the hills._  I don’t know,  _he says._  Goodbye,  _he adds abruptly._

_He gives the man a moment to continue, then finally begins walking away. He feels himself release the last vestiges of memory he has for the suited man, and by the time he’s done, he can barely recall the encounter._

_It’s all dusty hills and mist now. He walks, and perhaps it’s for minutes or for years. Time moves in eddies and pools here, and he’s a speck in its whims._

_But he does see the tree._

_It’s closer now then it ever had been before. He can see the individual leaves, the roughness of the bark._

_He can also see the person waiting for him there, leaning against the trunk and watching the sky swell past. Waiting, just as he said he would._

_He can tell that the figure under the tree hasn’t changed since he walked into a sea of grass so many years ago._

_He pauses, and just before the person is aware of his presence, he lets the name leave him in a huff._

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The hospital was quiet, save for the steady beep of the machines sitting by John’s bedside. Sherlock leaned back in the chair and stared hard at the ceiling, stroking John’s knuckle with his thumb. John stirred in his sleep, causing Sherlock to glance in his direction. The painkillers had put his flatmate well under, but that didn’t mean nightmares couldn’t still raise their heads.

John muttered something intelligible and fell still again. Sherlock reached across with his free hand, smoothing back the fringe of John’s hair. His fingers brushed the gauze that neatly covered the wound from the crowbar. The same material covered the bullet wound in his leg. The psychosomatic one, ironically enough. Sherlock fell back into his chair, staring into the soft dimness of the little room.

He was still sitting like that when John woke up several hours later. It happened slowly, but Sherlock became gradually aware of the way John’s breath grew quicker and shallower. He looked down to find dark blue eyes blinking blearily into the ceiling. They slowly drifted across the room, passing casually over Sherlock before slipping shut again.

“John,” Sherlock leaned forward, squeezing the hand in his grasp. John winced, cracking his eyes back open. “I haven’t left,” Sherlock said loudly, leaning forward until he was all but in John’s face. “John?”

John frowned wearily at the ceiling, then tilted his head down until he was looking at the hand ensconced within Sherlock’s. He squeezed, almost experimentally. Sherlock tightened his grip on John until his fingers felt numb.

After a long breath of silence something in John’s face softened. With some stiffness he brought their joined hands up to his face and pressed his lips briefly against Sherlock’s knuckles.

“’ts alright,” Sherlock heard him mutter, placing their hands on the pillow.

“Yes,” Sherlock agreed a little breathlessly. Because it was.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Mycroft arrived later that day, his suit only looking slightly bedraggled. Sherlock watched him warily, wondering whether he was going to try and sit in his chair. Mycroft remained standing, however, leaning on his umbrella as he spoke.

“You’ll be pleased to know that my assistant bears you no ill will from yesterday,” he began. John grinned ever so slightly.

“I hope you’ll tell her I’m sorry.”

“You’d have been even more sorry if you’d done any notable damage.” Myrcoft lifted his eyebrows. “I don’t believe you’d have wanted to see her angry.”

John’s grin faltered slightly.

“I also came to inform you that DI Lestrade survived the explosion in Hyde Park yesterday,” Mycroft continued. Sherlock jerked while John straightened.

“What?” he demanded, his voice oddly high.

“The bomb was removed from Mr. Lestrade before it detonated,” Mycroft explained patiently. “The ambulance carrying him made it nearly to the edge of the park before the explosion.”

John remained silent, his jaw clenching and unclenching.

“How many deaths?” he asked.

Mycroft cleared his throat. “Seventeen civilians. Three of my employees. I have reason to believe they were handling the bomb without recognizing its true purpose. Or perhaps they did recognize it and were unable to…well,” he made a thin smile. “I don’t believe we’ll ever know for certain.”

John closed his eyes briefly. “How is he?” he asked Mycroft. “Lestrade.”

“I’m afraid Moriarty did not treat him kindly,” Mycroft shook his head. “But he will recover in time.”

“Right,” John nodded. “There’s that at least.”

“Indeed. As you might guess, however, there are other issues we need to discuss.”

“Oh piss off, Mycroft,” Sherlock finally said. “It’s too early for you to be nosy.”

John merely nodded again, and Sherlock found himself wishing that John could at least hear him, if seeing him was too much to ask.

“You’d like to know how I killed three men and a criminal genius, when I was tied up and bleeding all over the place,” John guessed. Mycroft’s eyebrows twitched again.

“You must admit it is remarkable,” he said. “Perhaps as remarkable as the ballistics report.”

Sherlock straightened, his gaze now firmly on his brother.

“Oh?” John asked in a casual voice.

“One Bernie Fontain, killed by a single shot to the head,” Mycroft recited. “The angle of entrance suggests that the shot was fired at a height of a little less than six feet from the ground.” Mycroft and John studied one another for a moment.

“I have a long reach,” John tried. Sherlock felt his lips twitch.

“And incredible balance,” Mycroft added. “Your legs and feet were not in a most compromising condition for standing when we found you.”

John leaned into his pillow and glanced to the ceiling briefly. “I’ll guess that you have a theory,” he said.

“Six, approximately,” Mycroft nodded. “I will admit that people are capable to astonishing feats in the correct circumstances...”

“But?”

“But there are also facts. And as my brother used to say, whenever you have eliminated the impossible, then whatever remains, however improbable, must in fact be true.”

“Sherlock,” John said.

“I’m sorry?”

“We should start saying his name,” John said, his fingers shifting in Sherlock’s grasp. “Part of the grieving process, right?”

Mycroft’s gaze dropped to the bed, his umbrella tapping across the floor. “And you have reached that point then,” he asked, “in this grieving process?”

“I…I don’t know,” John admitted. “I don’t think the process was made with Sherlock Holmes in mind.” There was humor and affection in his voice when he said it.

Mycroft didn’t respond. John shook his head, a sigh escaping him again. “Mycroft, I’m not going to try and tell you what happened down there. Moriarty’s dead and honestly, that’s all we need to worry about.”

“Indeed,” Mycroft murmured. Sherlock realized that his brother’s gaze, which had been sporadically flickering over John’s hand during the conversation, was settling there with firm curiosity. John followed his gaze as well, his expression growing guarded.

Sherlock felt his lips part almost anticipatorily. Mycroft continued to scrutinize the hand, his face becoming something Sherlock hadn’t seen since he was nine and he’d stood beside his brother while men threw dirt over the coffin containing their father.

At long last, Sherlock gave John’s hand an apologetic squeeze before he slowly released it, setting it gently on the sheets.

He stood hesitantly, suddenly feeling stiff and awkward with himself. Mycroft’s eyes flickered up, as if he sensed some movement in the otherwise breathless air. Sherlock took three long steps until he stood face to face with his brother. His arm jerked upwards on its own accord, dithering tremulously before landing on Mycroft’s shoulder.

Like John, Mycroft responded with a light shudder, his gaze now fully raised to some point around Sherlock’s nose. They remained facing each other, neither moving for several long moments. Finally, Sherlock squeezed his fingers around Mycroft’s shoulder before releasing it and retreating to John’s side. He felt foolish and awkward as John flipped his hand palm-up, a smile hiding in the corner of his mouth. He placed his hand in John’s and felt it curl around him.

Mycroft blinked, hard. Then he refocused on John and tilted his head. John returned his gaze, the smile starting to claim his entire face. Mycroft maintained eye contact for another few seconds before he looked away, shaking his head and muttering something about getting well and a second meeting once John felt up to it. He picked up his umbrella and strode from the room, into the hall.

Sherlock heard something that sounded suspiciously like a sharp, pained laugh echo back to them.

He also studiously ignored the way John was beaming at the sunlight pouring in through the small window.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The next few days could only have been described as odd.

John was released from the hospital after two days, sent home with an arsenal of painkillers and a strict warning that he was under no condition to do anything more strenuous than make tea. Mrs. Hudson fussed over him once he got home, naturally, and cried a little when John pulled her into an embrace and thanked her for tidying the flat while he was gone, because he knew she wasn’t a housekeeper. Sherlock suspected John was thanking her for more than that, and that Mrs. Hudson knew it as well.

“Don’t mention it,” she said, as she and John looked around at the flat. “It’s easier when there’s no horrible dead things hiding in the breadbox.” John laughed, and Sherlock almost had to marvel at how it sounded simultaneously carefree and heavy-hearted.

Sherlock watched the two of them, leaned up against a wall. Dead animals and body parts aside, the rest of Sherlock’s items hadn’t moved from when he’d been alive nearly three weeks ago. It still looked like he was about to enter the room.

When Mrs. Hudson left, John remained standing, his eyes seeing something besides the flat.

“Are…” he cleared his throat. “Are you there?” Sherlock pushed off from the wall and strode over to John, reaching down to grasp his wrist. John’s head dropped down to the wrist, twisting it around experimentally. “Right,” he said. He lifted his head, his eyes sweeping a patch of air a little above his height. “I was just wondering…” he shrugged. “What now? With you, I mean. I suppose you could still solve crimes. I’d help, of course. Do all the talking to people.” Sherlock shifted his grip around John’s wrist, looking away in thought. “One squeeze for yes, two for no?” John added, a lilt of amusement in his voice.

It was not that Sherlock hadn’t considered continuing his work, now that he could interact with John. But when he tried to envision himself doing so, he felt an inescapable exhaustion creeping over him. It was disappointing, really, that all he wanted to do was to lie down somewhere and sleep for a few years. He supposed it was a side effect of being dead.

He couldn’t help but think about the stories of spirits returning to complete unfinished business. Had Moriarty been his unfinished business? And now that he was gone, Sherlock was obliged to join the rest of the dead…wherever?

But then there was John, Sherlock thought, as he looked down to the man waiting patiently for an answer. John who was most certainly his business, especially since he seemed to be attached to the man. John who might do any number of ridiculous things if Sherlock left him for a second time.

“Sherlock?” John asked, twisting his wrist again.

“I don’t know,” Sherlock said, because saying it out loud helped to clear his tangled thoughts a little. “What kind of life would that be for you? Spending the rest of your life following a dead man?”

John didn’t hear him, of course, but his eyes were steady and kind as they drifted across Sherlock’s face. The sight made Sherlock’s exhale heavily. The idiot would follow Sherlock dead or alive, wouldn’t he? He was that kind of person. That kind of friend.

Only now Sherlock was slipping into a place where John couldn’t follow. He supposed it had been happening ever since he’d died; he’d just been too busy trying to reestablish contact with the living to recognize it. Too frightened to admit its presence.

Sherlock tightened his had around John’s wrist once, twice.

John looked at his wrist, then shook his head, a rueful smile on his lips. “You won’t be staying,” he said.

Sherlock squeezed once.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Sherlock stayed with John for another week, because he honestly had no idea how to go wherever he needed to be going. It was an infuriating sensation, as if he were constantly forgetting some important meeting, and about to be late. He was aware of the way that he was slowing down, the way he couldn’t muster the desire to move guns or try to capture his blood for examination.

John took it in stride, as he always did. He spent a lot of time sleeping while his still-living body knitted itself slowly back together. Sherlock took to sitting in John’s room or the living room (depending on where his flatmate decided to collapse into sleep) reading or plucking at his violin or just watching John breathe.

John received a call from Lestrade several days after his own release. The DI had suffered a serious concussion, and he’d been told that it would be months before his left arm returned to normal strength.

“But I’m alive,” he told John over the cell phone. “We can start a club. I-survived-being-kidnapped-by-a-criminal-mastermind.”

John laughed appreciatively.

“How are you?” Lestrade asked. John got a peculiar smile on his face.

“I can’t say,” he told Lestrade. “I’m in this state of wanting to laugh and cry at the same time.” Sherlock, slung on the couch, watched as John’s gaze swept over the flat. Lestrade grunted sympathetically.

“I heard what you did,” Lestrade continued. “I don’t know whether to believe it or not.”

“I try not to think about it,” John said, and he sounded sincere.

The two men made plans to meet up for drinks once Lestrade felt up to it. Sherlock had to wonder whether they’d discuss him in the smokiness of that pub John seemed to enjoy going to. Whether Lestrade would ask for John’s help in future cases. Then he dropped the thought, because it hurt him in a way that felt neither familiar nor bearable.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Several days after Lestrade’s phone call, John left the flat after hours spent flipping through an old magazine without really reading a word of it. Sherlock followed him out the door, keeping one hand hovering behind John’s back as they stepped out of the flat and into the sidewalk. His flatmate was back to the cane, though this time for the very real bullet wound in his thigh.

They stood side-by-side on the curb as John watched the traffic bustle past. “Sherlock,” he muttered after a moment. Sherlock bumped his shoulder and received a small smile in return. John then lifted his hand for a taxi.

“Highgate Cemetery,” John told the cabbie as they climbed in.

Something cold unfurled in Sherlock’s gut. The cabbie grunted as he pulled into the traffic, while Sherlock felt his hands grip at the grimy seat. After a moment John’s hand snaked to the center of the seat. He rested it there, his palm up.

Sherlock lifted the hand and scooted into the center of the bench seat. He placed the hand in John’s lap, then pressed his body against John’s. John didn’t complain, merely leaned slightly into Sherlock in return.

The trip seemed to take twice as long as it should have, and with each second the cab seemed to grow smaller and more stifling. _Coffin-like_ , Sherlock considered, before shaking the thought from his head.

When they arrived, Sherlock followed John out of the cab with the cold sensation sunk deep into his core. His headache, kept at a respectable distance the past week, had suddenly surged forward again with loud crashes against his skull.

Sherlock dimly followed John’s familiar shape through Highgate’s entrance, down the gravel path that led between rows of silent grey tombstones. There were a few people visible among the stones, and Sherlock had a sudden, wild notion that not all of them were alive.

But he couldn’t stop and he couldn’t concentrate enough to follow the thought. He only knew that John was there, walking in front of him and currently the only thing that didn’t make him feel sick on sight.

Sherlock had little sense of how long they had been walking when John stopped before a mound of dirt. Sherlock peered through his headache and read “Sherlock Holmes“ before flicking his gaze away. It was probably something sentimental and gaudy, picked out by Mycroft or his assistant. He and John stood in silence together, John’s eyes trained on the headstone, Sherlock’s on anything else.

“I didn’t bring flowers,” the voice cut through the chill and the headache. Sherlock turned his head incrementally. “I think you’d probably make a snide comment if I brought flowers.” Sherlock tried to imagine what his reaction would have been to a flower-bearing John, but the idea twisted from his head.

“I haven’t visited here yet,” John explained, “because I didn’t think I could…” he faltered, shifting on his feet. “I just wanted to make sure you know, I’m okay with whatever you need to do.” Sherlock didn’t move. “I’m still going to miss you like hell,” John added. He blinked hard in the wind.

Sherlock glanced down at his tombstone then, and regretted it immediately. The cold redoubled, like a punch. It was so stark, so final, that engraving.

He felt then, more sharply than ever, that Sherlock Holmes had gone from the world of the living. Had gone from Scotland Yard, from London’s streets and alleyways, gone from 221B. Gone from John’s side. It was so very wrong, and Sherlock wanted to shout at the universe for how wrong it was.

He realized suddenly that he was leaning on John, his hand curled around his shoulder in a vice-like grip. Sherlock blinked hard, feeling the solidity of John Watson beneath his fingers. He focused on that, rather than the warm, tacky liquid oozing through his hair and the way his head spun with pain and the smell of iron. He felt himself shaking.

“I never wanted to go,” he muttered, not caring whether he would be heard or not.  
John didn’t try to give a mouthful of empty comforts. He merely stood and let Sherlock tremble against him as the wind flew past them both.

When he lifted his head incrementally, Sherlock was surprised to find the tree. It stood in the near distance, surrounded by a sea of rippling wild grasses that had replaced the rows of gray tombstones. He lifted his hand from John’s shoulder and took several steps towards it before he even realized he was moving. He froze then, looking back to find John standing in front of his tombstone, his gaze scanning the tree and wild grasses before settling firmly on Sherlock. He didn’t even look surprised. Just resigned.

Sherlock inhaled so sharply that it hurt, then strode back to his flatmate. He lifted his arms and pulled John into his body. John relaxed into Sherlock after a moment, dropping the cane to wrap arms around Sherlock’s shoulders.

“I’m sorry,” Sherlock said into John’s hair. John made some small sound against Sherlock’s chest.

“Figures that it takes dying to drag that out of you,” John told him. Sherlock made a wild sound that could have been a laugh as easily as a sob. He felt so heavy now, so exhausted and pained, and the bullet wound in his head was tearing a hole through his thoughts.

“This is a better goodbye than the first time, though,” John said, and his voice was thick suddenly. “A lot better.”

Sherlock felt then a dim memory of pain and dampness, of someone’s arms holding onto him and a chest shuddering against his face. He could almost recall the ghost of his name being recited in a low litany.

“I don’t know whether it’s better or worse that we got…this,” the John of the present was saying.

Sherlock pulled back slightly, enough to see John’s face properly. It was screwed up, as if against a bright sun. “I for one,” he said with some effort, “am infinitely glad we got this.”

He didn’t want to go. He had to. His work was done here, he suddenly sensed in the deepest part of himself. John was going to survive. He’d grow old and perhaps marry and become the grandfather with the razor-sharp sense of humor and stories about the insane, genius consulting detective he once worked with.

Because at that moment, Sherlock couldn’t help but suspect that Moriarty had had nothing to do with his prolonged visit with the living. He had to admit there was some relief in that.

John blinked hard several times, then pressed his face back into Sherlock’s neck. “I have to go back to that empty flat—“

“I know,” Sherlock clutched at John’s jacket. “But I know you too. You’re nothing if not strong.” He felt a violent wave of illness that radiated from the pain in his head. “I don’t…I think there are laws even I can’t argue with,” he murmured. John nodded, and there was a definite dampness on Sherlock’s neck. Not that it would matter.

They broke apart slowly, and even then Sherlock couldn’t quite manage to turn his back.

“Do you see that tree?” Sherlock asked suddenly, swinging his arm to point behind him. John nodded, his face still screwed up. But not blank and dead. Never that. “I’ll meet you there,” Sherlock ordered, “Once you’re ready. But not until you’re good and ready. Preferably when you have no idea that you’re ready.”

John managed a grin that didn’t throw off the damp trails snaking down his face.

“Yeah,” he croaked.

Sherlock walked backwards, feeling the wild grasses slice delicately at his exposed skin. John remained a stalwart figure, his dark blue eyes never leaving Sherlock’s. He kept walking, aware of the way the pain was receding, the bullet wound in his hair slowing its trickle of blood. Then in the space between one step and the next, John was swallowed up by the wild grasses and the blue sky.

Sherlock froze.

Something in him, the part that wanted to believe he was still part of the living world, urged him to run back the way he’d come. The wiser part of him told him it was time to turn around.

He did so, and found the tree still in the near distance. He began to walk.

 

 


End file.
